When Harrisburg-based pianist Katie Rudolph talks, you can almost hear the toll of a lifetime spent in smoky jazz joints rattling in her voice.

"I've always lived the musician's life," she muses. "I don't have a computer, I don't have a TV. I have several thousand books, a piano, and a German shepherd named Alex. ... He's my main guy." Rudolph's greatest possession, however, may be something much less tangible: a unique jazz style - a musical fingerprint, if you will - achieved by immersing herself in music for over a quarter of a century. "I don't sound like anybody except me," she states. "I listen to many, many different piano players. Sonny Clark has always been a favorite of mine, and I like Bill Evans ... but I really can't say that at any time in my development as a player I tried to sound like someone else."

A native of Lancaster, Rudolph quickly established herself as a regional mainstay when, after spending a few post-college years touring up and down the East Coast, she settled into the burgeoning Harrisburg jazz scene in 1979. And here she remains, teaming up with players like bassist Jim Miller (pictured) and drummer Dave Lazorcik several nights a week.

After a lifetime behind the piano (she first climbed onto the bench at age 6), Rudolph has come to regard jazz as a necessary ingredient in her diet. "I would say it's the one thing I do that involves the most forgetting of myself, and at the same time I'm the most myself," she explains. "There's a kind of purity and grace and joy to it that for me is unmatched in any other thing I've ever done."

As with many jazz musicians, Rudolph seems to be unconcerned with the crowd, or lack thereof, at her live shows. "It's not the number of people, it's the quality and type of their attention and participation, and what they give back," she states. "There's always going to be people playing jazz, and there's always going to be people listening to it, but remember, the very nature of this music is that it is not the mass-appeal music."

The joy in performing, therefore, lies in the act itself, according to Rudolph. "It's the fun of improvisation, of listening to other players, responding to what they're doing and having a conversation with them, and to be surprised by your own ideas. ... It's always enjoyable to play. I guess I would say that every time I go out and work, it's a highlight."