​Katy Byrd has greatly enjoyed exploring the wealth of musical opportunities in this area since moving to Madison in 2021. Working most often as an orchestral musician, she can usually be found cruising around the entire Midwest from symphony to symphony with her cats in the back seat, with regular work taking her through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and the rest of Wisconsin. As an undergraduate student, Katy studied the violin with Sam McClure at Truman State University. She transitioned to playing the viola during her master’s degree at the University of Kansas where she was a student of Phil Kramp, and she has most recently studied with Sally Chisholm at UW-Madison. As a teacher, Katy strives to incorporate students’ individual musical interests as early and as often as possible, because, as a beginner student, for the most part, Katy only practiced in order to learn music from The Lord of the Rings.