Five years ago, Lake Highlands resident Perry Morris was 12 years old. And he was, admittedly, a very weird kid. He didn’t spend hours a day staring zombie-like at TV or computer games. And he wasn’t into sports or cars. Instead, he was deeply into music – his parents’ music.
Morris says his parents, Anita and Michael Morris, always had music playing at the house as he was growing up. So when most kids his age were running out to buy their first Britney CD, Morris was listening to rock ‘n roll bands such as the Talking Heads and Led Zeppelin, along with a variety of jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Art Blakely and Dave Brubeck.
It inspired him to start playing the drums, something he soon realized he not only loved but had an unusual gift for. He began taking drum lessons with area musician and drum set instructor Lucy Flohr.
Once again, Morris proved very different from the average kid.
“The first thing that jumped out at me about Perry was that he knew the history of jazz music,” Flohr says.
“That’s unusual for a kiddo. And he’s a very serious musician. He was an excellent student and worked very, very hard.”
Flohr saw such potential in him that she encouraged him to apply for Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts. During his freshman year at Lake Highlands High School, Morris learned he had been accepted. It meant leaving his friends at school and taking a DART train downtown every day, but Morris says he didn’t mind.
“I was in hysterics,” he says of the day he heard the news. “It was an amazing thing. I had some good friends at Lake Highlands, but I knew for me this was what I needed to do. Nothing was gonna hold me back from going there.”
Now a senior, Morris has five music classes a day, and is a member of the midi ensemble (a group of mostly keyboards), the Latin ensemble and the jazz combo, all competitive groups that students must audition for.
His involvement in those groups has taken him to California several times, including performing at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his jazz combo won top honors in its category for the past three years. He has been chose twice to attend the Dave Brubeck Institute of Jazz in Stockton, Calif., which invites only 17 high school musicians across the country each year. And in January, he’ll travel to New York to perform for the second time at the International Jazz Association of Jazz Educators annual conference.
But despite all his success as a jazz drummer, it’s impossible to pigeonhole Morris as a specific type of musician. He’s recently become interested in Cuban music, and he also has begun playing with a hip-hop band, the Kind Beats, which recently performed at the Gypsy Tea Room.
“We got a really good response from the crowd,” he says. “Everyone really dug what we’re doing. It’s good to not have people falling asleep on you, like they can sometimes do with jazz.”
Because of his varying interests, he says he isn’t sure where his music will take him. But, he says, “I know that music will definitely play the major role in my life. I’m not sure if that means college or really trying to make something happen in a band. If I got a tour and could travel all over the world, I’d jump on that so fast.”
Whichever route Morris chooses, Flohr has no doubt about his future.
“He will be a professional musician,” she says. “That’s what he wants, and he’s certainly good enough. There’s no question that’s what he’s gonna do. He lives and breathes all these things.”
