From classical to punk music, sophomore Harrison Li can play it all. Li, who plays drums, guitar (acoustic and electric), bass, piano and also sings, hopes to turn his musical talents into a life-long career.

“I started playing drums when I was six, and started learning guitar at nine, and then picked up bass early after that. I took drum lessons for about two years, from six to eight, and everything else was self-taught,” Li said.

Li also enjoys songwriting and plans to use his musical and songwriting skills to form a band and to possibly make music his life-long career. His near future, however, is concentrated on taking gap years to travel and find others with common ambitions and goals.

“Obviously my parents want me to go to college, so I’m looking at maybe going to England for university, because I’m really interested in the British culture,” Li said.

Over the past few years, Li has been doing a lot of traveling from country-to-country and state-to-state. New York, Northern California, Portland, China and now Southern California are all the locations he has traveled to and lived in. The majority of the traveling was based off his parents’ jobs, but he always figured out how to cope with his new surroundings.

“I went to Portland for elementary school, and then China for secondary school, and then I did freshman year there as well,” Li said.

Li said he is ecstatic to travel for a couple of years, but eventually plans to settle down in England.

Li has been inspired by the music of The 1975, The Strokes, The Cribs,The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Death Cab for Cutie, Blink-182 and Green Day. An additional and unlikely influential figure in his life is Taylor Swift, who has inspired him to sing and write songs.

Li recalls childhood experiences of playing in bands and collaborating with other talented musicians in his general age group.

“In China I was in quite a lot of weird bands; I guess it was more of a childhood thing where you wanna be in a band, but none of it was very serious. I always did jazz band. I played guitar in jazz band in China, and then here I am doing drums and jazz,” Li said.

As just his first year in the Woodbridge community, Li has met other dedicated musicians who share a common skill and passion as he does.