Now that she’s mastered 25 concertos, performed with orchestras from Dallas to Toronto, designed much of her own concert clothing, and celebrated her 18th birthday, Caitlin Tully is ready to try something different: college.

All she has to do is figure out how she can keep her studies at Princeton University, beginning this fall, where she is as yet undecided on a major, from interfering with her concert career.

Besides all the concerto work, she has a recital in Paris coming up in spring 2007, and she has to make time for her lessons with Itzhak Perlman.

“It’s kind of neat to do music as a job already and realize, yeah, I do like it,” she says. “Now I want to figure out how to turn that into being a well-rounded adult, which is why I’m going to college while doing music as my career. How do I build a career and perform in the places and with the kinds of musicians I really want to, and not have school be detrimental in terms of scheduling? I don’t know if I can do it.

“Talk to me in four years.”

Caitlin hasn’t gone to a regular school since she was 10, when her parents came up with a combination of college classes, private tutoring, and self-guided textbook work to get her educated while still leaving time for music. “I was lucky that I was always doing other things with other kids, but it did make it a lot easier to travel for concerts,” she says.

Caitlin pronounces her Celtic first name “cat-lin,” but she’s not an Irish lass. She was born in Connecticut, but was brought up in Canada until her dad became head of the history department at the University of Texas. Her first awards, concerts, and appearances on radio and TV were in Canada, but now the Lone Star State claims Caitlin as one of its own: The Texas Cultural Trust Council gave her the 2005 Texas Medal of Arts Award.

Many young people, to get as far as Caitlin has at her age, spend their childhood shut up in a room practicing all day. Caitlin acknowledges that a lot of work stands behind every concert she gives. “It’s like being an athlete,” she says.

“A swimmer has to be in the pool for hours every day. It’s true of anything you do intensely. But if I look back over the past eight years, I feel very fortunate because I’ve gotten to do a lot of other things and still do my music with the intensity that I want.”

She’s a serious runner, for one thing. “I’ve always been fairly athletic, and running is a great thing to do if you travel; you just stick your shoes in your bag, and you’re ready,” she says. “It’s good for me to do something like that, where there’s a lot of adrenalin. It makes me feel stronger, which makes me more into music with my body. Playing an instrument is a physical thing; running makes me more aware of my body, how my muscles are working when I play, and it’s a good way to get rid of stress.”

She says she doesn’t get much flack from people warning her that she could hurt herself by being athletic. “I’m not inclined to go out and rollerblade, because there’s a large percentage of accidents from that activity that affect the wrists. I’m conscientious about my upper body, but beyond that you just hope for good fortune. I can trip just walking, because I’m a klutz.”

It all comes down to making careful choices. “I’ve been very lucky in that I don’t think there’s anything I love doing that I don’t get to do because I’m a violinist,” she says. “You figure out how to work music and other things into the life you have.

“For a while I liked to practice a lot in the morning, and I still do; I don’t practice well in the afternoon. But now that I’ve been performing more in the last two or three years and have to travel, I can’t have a strict schedule. I have to be flexible, and figure out how to do what needs to be done depending on what else is going on.”

Caitlin is not a person who slacks off, according to her Texas coach, Jan Sloman, principal associate concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony. “Caitlin is a wonderful student,” he says. “She is curious, inquisitive, and positive. She likes to see the whole picture; she wants to see how systems function. It’s not just analytical, it’s that she wants to get a sense of the whole process. There’s no artifice about her. She is very straight-ahead and genuine. What you see is what you get.

“She has everything it takes, artistically, personally, intellectually, and emotionally, to develop as a musician and an artist. All the elements are in place for her to be a complete artist.”

Caitlin knows that she’s still in the process of becoming that complete artist, and that even though she’s been playing the violin since age four, the hard work is by no means over. “I start to think, ‘Boy, do I really have to work on intonation my entire life?’ And I do,” she says. “What makes the difference between Heifetz and violinists who are just pretty good is that last five percent of hard work, all the time.

“I wouldn’t say I ever had burnout because of that. Sometimes after a whole lot of performances or in the summer I’ll take a week or two off. I’m still playing, because it feels gross if I don’t, but I’ll putter around the house or go to movies and not immerse myself in music so much. It feels great for a week and then I begin to miss it.

“I have lots of interests, but I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.”