Jason Nelson always loved playing music — he just didn’t realize he could do it for a living.
The 30-year-old New Jersey native started playing piano and saxophone when he was a kid and ended up doing impromptu performances for friends during college. He remembers playing during a friend’s 20th birthday. “She had no idea that I was going to be bringing my saxophone,” he says, “but I show up with my friend and I played happy birthday.” He was a hit.
After college, while working full time in marketing, Nelson got a request to play at a friend’s sister’s wedding, and he realized there was a possible career in playing live at events. He began booking other wedding gigs and eventually quit his job in marketing in September 2020 to play saxophone and piano full time.
These days, Nelson plays “an average of 80 events a year,” he says, most of them weddings but some also bar and bat mitzvahs and birthday parties. Though his prices vary, he makes “around $750” per hour, he says. In 2023 alone, he brought in more than $176,000.
Here’s Nelson’s advice for anyone who wants to follow suit with their own live music career.