You’re walking to sign-in when you suddenly hear an A minor chord.  Thinking you must have imagined it, you keep going, when you hear a string of notes: C major, F major, G major.  Wondering who on earth is playing “Hallelujah” in the hallway, you turn to find a girl with light brown hair and glasses picking out chords from a fret chart.  This is senior Meg Tilson, cradling the ukulele she sometimes brings to school.Tilson has always loved music.  An avid Beatles fan (George Harrison is her favorite), she also enjoys artists such as The Smiths and Morrissey.  Besides the ukulele, she also plays the guitar.

“I started playing ukulele around Christmas during sophomore year,” she said.  Since then, she has been occasionally bringing the instrument to school, strumming in the hallways and singing with her friends.

Tilson knows six songs on the ukulele, including “A Well Respected Man” by The Kinks and Elliot Smith’s “King’s Crossing”.  She quickly checks online for chord progressions when a nearby student mentions The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun”.  Just like that, the 1964 rock hit has become her newest musical project.

When she is not playing the ukulele, Tilson can be found in Dead Poets Society meetings, where she is a club officer.  But even there, she is rarely without a new song or a collection of flowery Elliot Smith lyrics to read.

“I love playing music with other people,” she said.  “It’s kind of a transcendental experience.  I doesn’t matter what you were doing before or what you’ll be doing later; right now we’re just together in the song, and I like that.”