The Collegian

Issue date: 10/23/08 Section: Arts

Hair neatly tossed over one shoulder, back straight and flip-flops kicked off near the pedals, senior Cameron Wilkens prepares for another two-hour practice session in a Howard Music Hall piano cubicle.

Today she's working on Liszt's Piano Concerto in E flat major to enter in Hillsdale College's annual concerto competition. Perfectly rounded fingers cartwheel down the

keyboard, picking out melodies as they arch, hand over hand.

Music has been Cameron's life since age five when she heard her sister play piano.

As she plays through tricky spots in the piece, Cameron stops and retraces melodies, again and again.

"It's a lot of concentration on tiny, tiny minutiae, tons of repetition," she said. Thus she repeats the phrases. Hands separately, slowly, quickly, for five hours, every day. Every note is important.

"Often students just blow over notes that seem extraneous. I try to make each note beautiful. I want to give it the character it needs."

But music means more to Cameron than notes.

From childhood, Cameron has also studied the physics of sound, music theory, history of composers, music's political context. Her mom structured home-school subjects around her love for music.

"At the beginning she loved the music, but it was really a mind game. She used to trick her teacher by playing her pieces backwards," said Cameron's mother, Sharon Wilkens.

Cameron even re-took a music theory class because she loved it so much and wanted to glean every theoretical detail.

"I love the academic side of music," Wilkens said. "I go crazy over theory. I am most definitely a music geek."

A friend peeks around the door and breaks the intensity of Cameron's concentration.

They exchange pleasantries while Cameron continues trilling. She stops, hands collapsing into her lap.

"Do you ever get the urge to somersault down here?" she asks.

Her spontaneity extends beyond somersaults on practice breaks to the performance stage.

"When she performs she'll perform barefoot if possible," says friend and senior Hannah Mead, adding Wilkens often wears "really, really long skirts" to hide as much of her feet on stage as possible.

But Cameron takes her performances seriously, striving to communicate what she loves in her music to an audience.

"Cameron feeds off the mood of the audience," her mother said. "If she can get the audience excited about the music, it makes her happy because music makes her happy."

Her ultimate goal is to share the joy music brings her. And she doesn't mind the hours it takes to perfect the ability to communicate that music.

"There's a beauty in music that goes beyond any words I could use," Cameron said. "I want to be able to show that - what I see in music - to other people. It's definitely, definitely, worth it."

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