BEST & BRIGHTEST: Teen's life written in harmony, melody
Travis Henry's musical beginnings sparked after he shot down a mountainside on his homemade sled and crashed.
As he lay sprawled in the snow, looking at the sky, he wrote his first composition, a short piece he called "Sledding." He was 8 years old.
"Ever since I can remember, everything I experience translates into music," said Henry, who turns 18 in May.
People told him "Sledding" was melodic, harmonic and smooth, except for the last part, which he admits was "just a bunch of jumbled up notes, pounded together loudly." His music teacher said he'd need to "fix" the ending if he were going to perform it at the school recital.
"Don't you get it?" he asked her. "I crashed at the end!"
She insisted he rewrite the ending, but he declined and didn't perform it at the recital. His teacher called him a stubborn child who refused to listen.
"When it came to my music, I suppose I was," he said. "But she was wrong. I did listen - to music of all kinds, to the greats, to those who know nothing of music but who are my audience. But mostly, I learned to listen to me. I learned to have confidence in my own strange ideas and believe in myself."
Travis has since written dozens of compositions and now plays five instruments - drums, piano, vibraphones, bass and guitar.
He's become an admired talent among local musicians, formed his own bands and played with several community music groups, including the Woodland Park Wind Symphony, Swing Factory and Broadmoor Academy of Music. He's performed in benefit concerts to raise money for natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
For the past three years, he's been chosen to attend GRAMMY Camp in Los Angeles in which high school students nationwide converge to create music and learn from professional musicians.
"Surprisingly, he does not view his music as a road to fame and fortune but rather as a rewarding journey of self-discovery and as a way to better the world around him," said Craig Harms, conductor of the Woodland Park Wind Symphony and Swing Factory.
Henry and other students who attended GRAMMY Camp last year formed Key Change Grants, which encourages young people across North America to create and promote social change through music. The program, supported by the GRAMMY Foundation and DoSomething.org, will give a total of $25,000 in grants to winners whose grass-roots projects use music to foster social change. The popular band Death Cab for Cutie helps advertise the grants.
"Music touches everyone," Henry said. "To be able to perform music is a gift I cherish. To be able to share music is giving the gift to others. When I think about it, maybe what the whole world could use is more notes and fewer bullets."
