Kate Warner, a PLNU sophomore, is one of eight finalists in Hillel of San Diego’s “Campus Superstar” show on March 18. As the youngest performer in this year’s show, she said she’s excited to showcase her indie style and “make music mean more.”
“[Campus Superstar] is really cool ‘cause it supports the Hillel Center,” Warner said. “It’s a good way to support diversity and support Jewish students. It’s making music mean more which isn’t an opportunity you get every day.”
The sold-out show supports Hillel Jewish Centers for Jewish students at SDSU and UCSD. The show includes choreographed group numbers and solo performances by each finalist. A panel of judges select three winners of the eight, and then the audience chooses one winner for the $5,000 prize. Warner won third place and recieved $500.
Warner is the only student from Point Loma competing in the show. She performed “Rise Up” by Andra Day. The other finalists are from UCSD, SDSU and USD. Most of them are upperclassmen or grad students studying music full time, as opposed to Warner, who is a psychology major with a music minor. Still, she is “expecting to have a fun time.”
“Really everytime I’m in rehearsal [for the show] I look around and say I have no idea how I got here,” Warner said. “[The other finalists] have more training and experience on me. I’m expecting to have a fun time cause I love performing and I’m not looking at it as a competition, I’m just looking at it as like a chance to do what I love.”
Warner’s indie style will be different from the musical theater and opera style of the other finalists. She recently released a song called “Cold Coffee” on Spotify and iTunes that exhibits her experimentive approach to songwriting.
“I think, a lot like my presence at Point Loma, [my music] is very different,” Warner said. “I don’t think I necessarily fit in a crowd here, and I don’t think my music does either. I think if people wanna listen to it, just know I am the physical embodiment of indie trash in the best way possible.”
To Warner, music has been a constant outlet for self-expression and a stronghold during unsteady times. Music is her way of coping and understanding her world.
“I think that singing and performing is about having something so great to say that you can no longer stay silent about it,” she said. “That’s why I sing, why I write, cause it offers closure. It sounds weird, but I don’t really get full closure on something until I write about it.
“If anything was possible, I would love to be a singer-songwriter,” she continues. “That would be the dream, to just play music all the time.”
Steve Anderson 
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