Jackson Free Press

For William Walker, it was the soundtracks of movies such as "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones"—not their big-budget action sequences and explosions—that enamored him. As a child, his mother, Romaine Richards Walker, took him to the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra's Halloween concert at Thalia Mara Hall. There, among the expressive harmonies of songs he did not yet know, his lifelong ambition of being a conductor was born.

A musical talent in cello, saxophone, orchestral French horn and bassoon, Walker left Murrah High School, where he was in the Power Academic and Performing Arts Complex program, in September 2009 to complete his senior year at Interlochen Arts Academy at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. While there, Walker encountered classmates who had previous exposure on national radio, played for thousands in grand American theaters and traversed the globe with famed orchestras.

"I wouldn't call it a wake-up call, but it was something in that vein," Walker says.

To try and top the best cellists in the country, he brought a new approach to practicing. He set his metronome to 40 beats per minute, allowing him time to perfect the music at an early stage so that mistakes became infrequent later on. During the concert season, which was about three weeks long, Walker was first chair of the rotating cello section.

At only 20, he achieved his conducting dream while studying at Chicago College of Performing Arts in the fall of 2012. Wishing to make a conductor audition tape, he asked his classmates to help him out. With that, the Virtuoso Philharmonic of Chicago, one of the few orchestras in the world that people under 30 completely formed and manage, was born. With Walker at the helm, the philharmonic has performed for audiences in the hundreds all across Chicago. Before graduation, he led the search for his replacement.

The northeast Jackson native credits Bennett Randman, his private cello instructor while he attended school in Jackson, with stirring up his passion for cello performance.

Walker is now back in Jackson, where he lives with his mother and sister, Adria Walker, who is the Jackson Free Press' editorial assistant. Through each stage of his musical education, which may next include Royal College of Music in London, Walker says he has gained expertise and connections. Since he was in high school, he has dreamed of founding an international boarding high-school conservatory for music in Mississippi.

"That's the long-term goal, so that the most gifted people in Mississippi can stay in (the state) to study with the greatest players in the nation," Walker says.