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Ro Rowan, Musician
I’m so excited to share this powerful conversation with the incomparable Ro Rowan as the next installment of Your Recovered Life Series: True Stories From The Future.
Ro is a gifted cellist, songwriter, composer, photographer and videographer.
She’s the quintuple threat 😉
She’s currently rocking her dream at the Berklee School of Music in Boston where she is enjoying huge success, performing with and for a who’s who of the music industry and winning more accolades and scholarships than I can list here. (Go here to read more or see her official bio below…)
And oh yeah, she’s REALLY happy!
Along the way to owning her calling she was a collegiate athlete, worked as a video editor and was the owner of her own fitness business.
I had the opportunity to hear her story and was inspired by her honesty, passion and willingness to walk through the fear in order to live a life of connection, authenticity and joy.
I was thrilled when she agreed to share her story.
We discuss:
- How a safe but not totally satisfying career prepared her for the leap into the unknown
- Walking away from ‘financial security’ to follow a dream (!!)
- What to do when you have a lot of interests and aren’t sure which to follow
- How living big means taking big risks and how fear of debt didn’t stop her
- The question to ask your inner child
- Trusting and letting go of the results
- How she feels like she’s playing like a kid every day!
- And as a special bonus she made me cry
Enjoy!
Ro Rowan’s Offical Bio from www.RoRowan.com:
Although Ro studied classical cello and spent most of her youth in orchestras, she has brought her rich tone to a vast landscape of genres within the Los Angeles and Boston music scene since 2002.
In the early 2000s, while attending UCLA pursuing a degree in Musicology and playing in the UCLA Symphony Orchestra, Ro began to focus on her longtime interest to play the cello in non-classical settings.
Since then she has played live shows with numerous bands and singer/songwriters in Los Angeles such as Taylor Dayne, Fee Waybill, Zander Schloss and Francisco Aquabella at such well-known venues as the The Viper Room, B.B. Kings, Hotel Cafe, The El Rey, The Whisky and Silverlake Lounge. In addition to performing, she has worked as a studio musician. Her cello and vocals can be heard on over 100 tracks on albums for artists such asTiffany, Bob Forrest, Melissa Ferrick, Sparklemotion and Lunar Click and major motion picture soundtracks Disney/Pixar’s Brave, Blood and Chocolate and Henry Poole Is Here. She also had the unique opportunity to play on Deepak Chopra’s meditation cd, The Secrets of Healing.
In 2010, Ro was accepted into Berklee College of Music and was awarded the North American Scholarship and began studying cello with Eugene Friesen. During her first semester, she joined the prestigious Berklee World Strings under Friesen’s direction. In her time at Berklee, Ro has had the honor to perform with/for such well-known musicians/composers as Willie Nelson, Annie Lennox, Alan Silvestri, George S. Clinton, Ron Carter, Jorge Drexler, Terri Lyne Carrington, Lalah Hathaway, Melissa Ferrick, Kathy Mattea, Simon Shaheen, Darol Anger, Ivan Lins and Larry Harlow among others. She has also served as principal cellist for Berklee’s newly formed Scoring Session Program (2012 – 2013) under the direction of George S. Clinton.
Ro was a DJ for the college’s Internet radio station, the Berklee Internet Radio Network (BIRN), hosting three shows from 2010 through 2011 (Boston Becomes Electric, Summer Soundtrack and Indiependence). She conducted interviews with artists such as Zoe Keating, Lenka, Jason Reeves, Gaby Moreno, Amber Rubarth, The Milk Carton Kids and Joe Purdy. Ro was also a part of the Video Team within the Management Group at the BIRN which successfully created a video presence for the station by developing content for the new BIRN YouTube Channel.
Now in her seventh semester, Ro is majoring in Electronic Production & Design (EPD) and has studied cello with Eugene Friesen (Paul Winter Consort), Simon Shaheen (Qantara), Patricia Pinkston (Utah Symphony Orchestra) and Owen Young (Boston Symphony Orchestra). In addition to receiving the North American Scholarship, she has received the William Randolph Hearst Scholarship, Outstanding Scholar Award, Berklee Achievement Scholarship and the Laurie Anderson Women in Music Technology Award from the EPD Department.
While at Berklee, Ro began pursuing a lifelong passion, photography and videography, and started freelancing under the name Ro Rowan Photography. In the year and a half since she began freelancing she has photographed Paula Cole, Melissa Ferrick and dozens of her fellow Berklee students. Her photography can be seen on the websites for numerous artists, Meinl Cymbals, Keep The Edge Studios, Steelehaus Creative Corp. and The ASA Collective. She recently directed and filmed a music video for Melissa Ferrick’s song “I Don’t Want You To Change.”
In June 2012, Ro and fellow Berklee student,Gabriela Jimeno, started The ASA Collective, a website dedicated to showcasing and connecting mindful artists through video and collaboration. Ro and Gabriela, realizing they were surrounded by a pool of talented musicians, felt inspired to help artists of all kinds connect: ASA stands for Artists Supporting Artists. Ro is the site’s videographer, photographer, video editor and web designer while Gabriela is the illustrator, graphic designer and web designer.
Ro most recently toured with Melissa Ferrick in support of her new album, “The Truth Is” which was released June 4, 2013.
Ro continues to write and record her own material. Two of her singles, “The Drive” and “Slow Motion on the Streets,” can currently be found on iTunes.
