Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 5, 1992 TAG: 9201030031
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
A YOUNG BEETHOVEN?
Chris Barry is a bit of Mozart and Beethoven, an aspiring Frank Lloyd Wright and a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Scott Joplin.He's also a sixth-grader, a Boy Scout, an occasional baseball player. And, at age 11, he's a composer of more than four dozen piano works, one of which he performed last month as the only Southwest Virginian recognized at the Virginia Music Educators Association convention in Richmond.
Calling him remarkable somehow seems inadequate.
"I'm just as proud of him as I can be. He's just super," said Lois Carr, music teacher at Belle Heth Elementary School.
Susan Goodykoontz, his piano teacher for the past four years, was even more effusive. "He is talent and intellect personified. He's got it all."
Perhaps. But, he's also had to cope with a serious hearing loss following a bout with meningitis at age 3.
"That's why he relates closely to Beethoven," said his mother, Barbara. Chris wears a hearing aid in each ear. In school, he takes advantage of a special system that pipes the teacher's words to him clearly and directly through headphones.
Like Beethoven's, Chris's hearing loss has not hindered him from exercising his enormous talent as a precocious composer and pianist, which is where the comparison with Mozart begins.
"He started earlier than I did," Chris said of the 18th century child prodigy.
In any event, "Russian Dance," which he performed at Richmond, is not mere child's play, but a complex and compact piece of varying mood and texture. It's also his personal favorite.
"I think of a melody in my head," said Chris; then he tries it out on the piano before committing it to paper.
He wrote his first piano composition in third grade, after just four months of piano lessons. The next year, he gave his fourth-grade teacher three piano cantatas as a birthday gift.
His Richmond appearance won recognition from the Radford School Board this month, but Chris is quick to clarify that the performance itself was not a competition.
"It was a showcase of young composers of music from across Virginia," he said. Even so, his cassette tape entry was among the top 13 selected, and Chris was one of only four elementary school pupils in Virginia to perform.
In the spring, Chris hopes to reprise his Virginia success at the national music educators' conference in New Orleans, which also happens to be his birthplace.
"He thinks that's his destiny. He figures he has jazz in his soul," joked his mother.
"Jazz Alley," another recent composition he submitted to the music educators' competition, reflects his love of Scott Joplin-style ragtime and 1930s jazz. He also prefers Beethoven and Schubert over the likes of Guns 'n' Roses and the Rolling Stones.
"I don't listen to [rock] very often," he said, adding that he also enjoys the "Robin Hood" and "Dances With Wolves" soundtracks.
As poised and articulate away from the keyboard as when he's at it, Chris is nonetheless reserved. Clean-cut and quiet, he adroitly employs a mature and precise manner of expression that belies his youth.
While he practices daily, he doesn't spend all his free time at his piano. He's also active in Boy Scout Troop 46, where he has attained first-class rank. His first merit badge was, of course, in music. Recently, he joined a Civil War re-enactment regiment as a drummer boy and plans to get a friend to teach him what he needs to know.
Surprisingly, Chris sees music as a relatively minor part of his future.
"I don't see a full-time career in music. Maybe part time," he said. He would prefer to study architecture or, perhaps, to follow in the footsteps of his physician father, F. Michael Barry.
But his piano teacher thinks her gifted pupil might still change his mind.
"You don't teach Chris. You just sort of coach him along," said Goodykoontz, who plays the organ at St. Jude's church where the Barrys attend. On Christmas Eve, Chris will played the piano for the children's liturgy there. He is also learning the organ.
His mother says Chris needs little encouragement to perform in public.
"I get more nervous than he does," she said. Next year, he will accompany the Dalton Intermediate School chorus.
For the future, Chris said he plans some longer works. His longest to date runs 17 pages.
"I think I'll wait until I have more time to do it," he said. Next summer, he hopes to be able to learn computerized composing techniques.
"He works every bit as hard as he thinks," said Goodykoontz. She also thinks Chris is so talented that she'd like to see him move on to a piano instruction specialist some day.
"People like him come along once in a lifetime."
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