Over in a corner of Bill Hill’s living room sits a battered old marching drum. Nowadays, his 2-year-old granddaughter Roselyn loves to give it a whack. Grampa did the same – back when he was 4 years old.

“Drumming was just something I always loved to do,” he said in his resonant North Carolinian drawl. With a chuckle, Hill admits to a public debut at age 6, playing the snare at a Christmas show for — you guessed it — “Little Drummer Boy.”

Now he’s 71, and it’s the end of his 45-year tenure with the Colorado Symphony. The weekend of May 30-June 1, Hill will play timpani for the final time in Boettcher Hall. His clear, steady beat has been a hallmark of the orchestra, just as his long ponytail and beard have remained a welcome sight for thousands of concert-goers.

Hector Berlioz’s razzle-dazzle “Symphonie fantastique” serves as a fitting climax for the concert. It features plenty of timpani — but don’t expect any fancy moves from Hill. He’s too humble for all that. Heck, he doesn’t even know if there will be any onstage speeches. (You can bet he won’t depart unrecognized.)

Hill hates tooting his own horn, or banging his own drum, but he’s happy to share the praise he’s received via his wife, Natalie (a violinist and former member of the orchestra).

“She told me some musicians said things like, ‘Bill understands the placement of the beat.’ That’s quite a compliment, because an orchestra needs to know where to be with the beat. (Timpanists) need to feel that instinctively.”

High praise also comes from music director Peter Oundjian: “Bill is an extraordinary musician whose artistry and leadership have shaped the very soul of the Colorado Symphony.”

He didn’t grow up in a family of musicians — his parents were academics.

“I was born in Burlington, North Carolina, then we moved to (southwest) Virginia, where my parents taught at Emory and Henry University,” he said. “It was a beautiful place, in the Appalachians. I loved being in an academic environment, with all those books!”

All the while he kept at his music. At 16, he was named timpanist in a band touring Europe.

But why the timpani?

“It was always my favorite,” Hill replied. “I started playing it when I was 12. I liked that I could tune it. Then I discovered it was the rhythmic underpinning of the orchestra.”

Once he was ready for college, the scholarship offers poured in — but it was the music department at the University of Indiana University that won him over.

Specifically, it was professor of percussion George Gaber, who’d befriended a Who’s Who of classical music and jazz giants, and became a huge influence on Hill.

It took time before he settled in Denver, apart from a brief stint in 1977 with the Breckenridge-based National Repertory Orchestra.

“That gig gave me my first taste of the mountains,” said the future big-time skier.

He worked at the Omaha Symphony for two summer seasons before coming aboard at the Denver Symphony in 1980.

“Then there was a (six-month) lock-out,” Hill remembered. “When the Honolulu Symphony called me over they said, ‘If Denver calls you back, you can go’ — which was really nice.”

The Denver Symphony collapsed in 1989 and became the Colorado Symphony, experiencing, as he put it, years of “ups and downs, but more ups.”

Such is his life’s journey, lugging a bulging backpack, filled with more than timpani sticks. There’s the 200 ethnic percussion instruments in his basement. He’s a also brilliant marimba player. He’s taught composition at the University of Denver, recently retiring after 20 years. Hill has also established himself as a composer of 200 chamber and orchestral pieces, including such works as Poe’s “The Raven” and “Funky Little Crustaceans.”

Music runs in the family: His son Colin has written works for the Evergreen Chamber Orchestra and Colorado Symphony, and Hill’s daughter Nadya is (according to Dad) an amazing singer and has numerous credits on her résumé.

Dad has been music director of the Evergreen Chamber Orchestra for 10 years, and on May 24 and 25 will conduct afternoon concerts featuring his “The Ravens’ Tears” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Upcoming is a recording with the Colorado Symphony of his compositions.

There’s precious little time for a favorite outdoor passion: mountain climbling/downhill skiing.

“I’m getting too old for that,” he sighed. In years past, joined by one of his Siberian huskies, Hill would trudge up a 13er or 14er, slap on his skis and then whoosh down with his companion romping alongside.

The man marches to the beat of a different drum.