The Collegian

Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Arts

Senior Kathryn Williams may appear quiet when you shake her hand, but when playing piano with the Hillsdale College Big Band or her jazz combo, her demeanor changes. She sits up. She moves with the music. She nods to the approving finger snaps the audience gives her solos.

Williams loves how jazz piano lets her entertain others.

"Being able to interact with the audience is my favorite part," she says. And whether she's playing at an afterglow or a library jazz event, Williams adds to a style of music known for encouraging its listeners to move along with it.

"I really love big band performances," Williams says. "They're exciting and it's fun to play with the band because you get lots of ideas."

Williams has accompanied big band since her freshman year. Last year, Williams played with the jazz combo Generic Produce. Now, she works with a new set of musicians. Despite some anxieties - Williams says she doesn't play by ear very well - she's excited to work with her new combo and thinks she'll improve in the process.

Because jazz tends to be more free form in its structure than classical, Williams can play around within the limits of a song, she says. She also adds to a song by developing "certain phrases or runs or favorite motifs that you throw in."

"I learned my jazz theory pretty well," she says. "I often use my knowledge of chords and scales and use that to manipulate a new melody."

But as much as she's learned in big band and combo, Williams didn't discover the appeal of jazz music at Hillsdale.

Before she started lessons at the age of 14, Williams practiced on her family's piano until she convinced her mother that she was responsible enough for lessons. One of the first songs she learned to play was a boogie-woogie.

"A boogie is a simpler form of jazz, but people like to dance to it," she says. "It's got a distinctive rhythm and it's energetic and fun. They're interactive and that's appealing to the entertainer in me," Williams said.

Entertaining runs in the family. Williams's grandmother played piano professionally in a Chicago nightclub.

"I've heard her on tapes and her kind of music is my favorite," Williams says. "She was definitely an entertainer."

Musical taste isn't the only legacy she inherited from her grandmother. Williams still uses the sheet music her grandmother once played, and her family's piano belonged to her grandmother as well.

"It's really cool to have her piano and it's really neat to know that I have something of her in me," Williams says.

When she graduates next May, Williams, who has always wanted to travel, might play piano on a cruise ship. But she's quick to mention other possibilities: massage therapy, bartending, teaching or working with missionaries in Argentina.

"Whatever I do I'd like to keep my piano and make sure I study and keep learning," Williams says. "I like to do a lot of things and if one doesn't work out, I can try something new."

That's something else Williams has taken from jazz - the ability to improvise.

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