musician

Anyone who plays music can be called a musician. Whether you're playing the cello on stage at Carnegie Hall or playing the harmonica on a subway platform, you're a musician.

While this word is most often used to mean a professional instrumentalist, it can also refer to someone who writes or sings music, and even your brother's friend who occasionally plays the drums in a Led Zeppelin cover band. Musician originally meant "one skilled in music," from the Latin musica, "the art of music and poetry," which has a Greek root, mousike, "art of the Muses."