Meet the Crescendo Alliance Foundation

I want to tell you about the Crescendo Alliance Foundation. But before I do, I have to tell you why it exists. And to do that, I have to tell you about the kid I used to be.

I was a classically trained musician. Or maybe I should say I am. Either way, from as early as I can remember, I practiced for hours every day. Music wasn’t a hobby. It wasn’t an after-school activity. It was the thing. The thing I was going to do with my life. I had been accepted into art schools my whole childhood, and the way that worked was beautifully simple: practice, audition, get accepted, and the training was covered. I never had to think about money, because money was never the obstacle. Talent and effort were the only currency that mattered.

Then I turned 16, and that whole world quietly fell apart.

It started with Italy. I was accepted into a summer program to study privately with a teacher to one of the Big 5 philharmonics. Life-changing access. Excitedly I told my parents. They asked how much it cost - and that’s kinda where it ended. Were there scholarships? No. They offered to take out a loan, but in that ‘please say no’ kinda way. I said no. That was the first time in my life that the obstacle in front of my craft was something I had absolutely no control over.

I thought it was a one-time thing. It wasn’t. Italy was just the opening note.

After Italy came the conservatory question. It was made very clear that wherever I chose to go - I needed a scholarship - period. No other options, guidance, or assistance was offered. I didn’t know about student loans at the time or even donors. All I knew was that not only did I have to get IN - but then I had to be SO GOOD that they wanted to let me attend for free. No pressure.

Eventually I just stopped. I walked away from music as a career entirely. Not because I lost the love for it, and not because I wasn’t good enough, but because I ran out of doors to try - or rather - didn’t know which doors were even there.

And then - I was lost. Truly, deeply lost. I spent years not knowing what to study. I changed my major nine times. Philosophy, psychology, physics, anything I could try on. Each one was interesting. None of them filled the space music had filled. I actually had enough music credits to be awarded a music degree if I just took the core academic classes, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It hurt too much to be that close to something I had put down. Looking back, that period of being lost reshaped the entire trajectory of my life. I ended up in tech, and I am genuinely proud of the career I built, but I will always know exactly what I lost on the way here.

I am telling you all of this because I do not want it to happen to anyone else.

So I Built Something

In 2025, I started the Crescendo Alliance Foundation. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (our application is in, fingers crossed), and it exists to fund the things that nobody else funds. The cascade of costs that pushed me out of music has not gone away. There are struggling musicians living it right now, and I want them to have what I didn’t.

Tuition scholarships exist. Big competitions exist. Famous-name prizes exist. What does not exist, in any organized way, is help with the costs that sit around the training and auditions. The travel to the audition. The application fee. The instrument repairs and accessories. The black concert dress that has to appear. The summer program in a city your family can’t get you to. These are not the dramatic costs. These are the quiet ones, and they are the ones that decide who actually shows up.

The Foundation provides funds for audition support (travel, fees, prep, attire, etc), instrument grants (purchase, repair, rental), masterclass attendances, summer intensives, student scholarships, grants for small musical nonprofits and orchestras, and matching funds for community fundraisers. Basically, the line items that no gala invitation has ever featured but that quietly determine who gets to keep going. This is not limited to young musicians - this is early career intervention. Musicians that legitimately want to have a career in music but are on the precipice of getting that first contract.

And Then I Built More

Honestly, I couldn’t stop at the Foundation. Once I started thinking about this space, every gap I noticed turned into a question. How do musicians find out we exist? How do donors who want to back a specific artist actually do that? How does a kid from a non-conservatory background even know what audition repertoire to prepare? How does a freelance string quartet advertise itself for hire? How does a student find a private teacher near them who can take them to that next level? None of this lives in one place. It’s scattered, ad-hoc, mostly hobby projects, because the user base is considered too small to justify building anything real.

So I built the real thing anyway. Crescendo Alliance, the platform, pairs with the Foundation. Musicians can apply for support there. Donors can find and back specific artists. Auditions and paid opportunities get posted. Teachers and students can find each other. Audition repertoire lives where people can actually get to it. And the platform isn’t just for our Foundation. Other foundations, nonprofits, and orchestras can use it too, because if I’m building this anyway, I want everyone in this space to be able to use it.

If you want to know how a person actually builds a full platform like this on nights and weekends in months instead of years, that whole story is in I Coded with Claude…and I Liked It. Short version: I had help.

How You Can Help

There are a few ways in, and all of them matter.

Donate. Head to CrescendoAlliance.org. You can give online, by check, by phone, or by wire, whichever is easiest. Donations may be 100% tax-deductible retroactively pending our 501(c)(3) approval, and you’ll get an immediate tax receipt and quarterly impact updates so you can actually see where your money went. That last part matters a lot to me. I want you to trust where this money is going, because I know what it’s like to need someone to trust you.

Apply. If you are a musician, a teacher, or a small organization that needs help with any of the things I listed above or anything else, please apply. You are not bothering us. You are not asking for too much. You are exactly who this is for.

Tell someone. This one might be the most important. The hardest part of helping artists in this gap is not raising the money. It’s finding the artists before they give up and walk away. If you know a musician staring down an audition flight they cannot afford (and they don’t always advertise that), or a teacher scraping together a budget for their studio, or a community orchestra drowning in operating costs, send them our way. Forward this post. Text them the link. Mention it at your next rehearsal. That kind of help is something a donation button cannot buy.

One Last Thing

I cannot go back and undo the cascade that pushed me out of music. I cannot give 16-year-old me back the years she spent chasing something - anything that matched my passion for music. But I can make sure that the next kid does not have to live that story. I can build the thing I needed to exist when I was her, and I can do it with the skills I built in the career I ended up in instead. There is a kind of full circle in that.

Music should not belong only to the families who can absorb the hidden costs. It should belong to the people who love it most and work the hardest at it. That is the bet I am making with this foundation, and if you want to help me make it, the door is open at CrescendoAlliance.org.