It’s not easy to make a living as a musician in Montgomery County.

Kanysha Williams knows that firsthand. The 33-year-old vocalist was born in Silver Spring and has lived all over the Washington, D.C., region, including her current home in Southeast Washington. She juggles work as a private music teacher and an actress in theater productions, among other smaller gigs. The surge in costs of living isn’t far from her mind.

When Williams looked around her community of collaborators and mentors in recent years, she noticed a common thread.

“I feel pretty integrated into the music scene in D.C., but what I noticed is that there were a group of people who seemed to have unlocked the key to making a living performing, writing, teaching and doing music in this area,” Williams said. “And I realized slowly but surely most of those people came through this program.”

That program is Strathmore’s Artists in Residence, which launched in 2005 to help local musicians make a career out of their work. The North Bethesda nonprofit institution selects six artists annually across genres and disciplines who participate in a 10-month program, which started in September and runs through June. The opportunity offers seminars on practical tasks such as marketing and accounting, a $6,000 stipend that’s funded by donors, and live performance dates.

The latest cohort of artists has their debut concert 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the Music Center. This year’s class includes Williams, who has been rehearsing pieces with other classmates, including cellist Ellen Gira and trumpeter Cyrus Mackey.

Williams said she has appreciated the program for its guidance and clarity in a career path that can be aspirational, yet murky.

“A lot of people have talent. A lot of people have skill — D.C. is not short on musical talent whatsoever,” Williams said. “But, like, how do you go from being talented to being an artist? And that’s what I’m really excited about.”

Her musical journey has been even more fortunate than that of others, Williams said. She recalled a musical upbringing, where her parents and extended family were all performers, which was rooted in church music. Williams went to high school at D.C.’s prestigious Duke Ellington School for the Arts and got a crash course in world music, funk, hip-hop and more.

Connecting the dots of different musical traditions through the program has been an exciting throwback to her schooling, Williams said. It has also been one of the program’s highlights for cellist Gira.

The 30-year-old grew up in Potomac and credits her own musical training to orchestra programs at Montgomery County Public Schools, among the wealth of options across the region. Similar to Williams, Gira has a few music-related jobs, such as teaching cello and performing in multiple music groups. She’s most interested in exploring how the classical instrument can be played prominently in folk traditions.

“I’m really interested particularly in this combination of Scottish traditional music and influences from jazz,” Gira said, specifically citing early collaborations with Mackey’s trumpet stylings. “Seeing the similarities in timbre between our instruments, it makes me really excited and makes me feel like this is something that can be explored that hasn’t been just yet.”

Gira started playing the cello around age 11 and was inspired to take it seriously after participating in the institution’s Maryland Classic Youth Orchestra and seeing a performance from the folk quintet Highland, Heath & Holler at Strathmore. “I kind of feel like I grew up at the Strathmore,” she said.

Both Williams and Gira shared a feeling of wanting to make their home region a place where music can be a viable career path.

“I am excited to be a part of something that can show people that it’s possible to create and live and thrive where you were born,’ Williams said.

“I don’t think D.C. is a place where you have to leave your hometown in order to make something work for you,” she added, “and I’m hoping I can be an example of that.”