In Harmony

“I used to think growing up would be easy,” go the lyrics of “Breathless,” one of four songs written by students from Toronto’s Parkdale Collegiate Institute and recorded at the Deane Cameron Recording Studio in the Allied Music Centre.

More typically, sentiments like these get scrawled in journals or on bathroom-stall doors (or their social-media equivalent). But for elementary and secondary students in the Collaborations Songwriting Project—one of many outreach and education programs meant to invite communities into the hallowed Massey Hall—their words and ideas, with the help of an artist collaborator, get put to music.

“It may seem intimidating to write a song, but it really is very scalable to the students’ abilities,” says Vanessa Smith, director of education and outreach at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall. And it comes together quickly. Artists are paired with classes, and in their first session, “which is whatever [their] classroom period length is,” says Smith, “they’re able to write a verse and a chorus” in addition to developing the metre, tune and melody.

Later, Collaborations invites the students to return to the Allied Music Centre to see their collaborator onstage, attend a sound check or, as the Jean Lumb Public School did, perform with their artist, Good Lovelies. (“‘Massey Hall is a go!’ are words not many music teachers get to say to their 12- to 14-year-old students,” says teacher Katherine Fraser in an email.)

Maybe most exciting, as was the case with Parkdale CI students and their artist collaborator, Canadian R&B artist Shakura S’Aida, they gain insight into songwriting, learn about the recording process (and various career paths in the industry) and, ultimately, lay down tracks. The impact of the experience can reverberate for a long time.

“The fire of making music has been lit [for] many students who didn’t even know what that was all about,” says Parkdale CI teacher Liz Prosser.