Music Project Unites Closing Cardinal Heights in Positive Memories
Cardinal Heights elementary is a school with musical roots. It has its own music studio. It has talented staff who play in local bands. And the school even has its own band – the Cardinal Commitments – that hums with the musical talents of staff and students.
So as the school closes this week, they wanted to do something special.
Bill Hughey, a Grade 6 language and social studies teacher, knew that music would be key to an end-of-year school closing project. He had built the small music studio with its recording equipment, speakers, mics and soundproofed walls. He had an idea.
“Cardinal Heights opened in 1963 so we thought it would be neat to record a song from each of the decades that the school has existed,” says Hughey, who plays live locally in the Cardinal Commitments and The Shakes.
The new project required a studio band with a host of new skills, such as mixing tracks to create finished songs as well as the creativity that goes into CD cover design. It required students – lots of students, about three dozen – to layer harmonies, to rap, to play instruments and so much more.
The first striking thing about the CD titled Future Past is its musical innovation. There are great interpretations of Cream’s White Room, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, Cyndi Lauper’s True Colours, Nirvana’s All Apologies, Adele’s Someone Like You and Black Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love.
“This is a tough year for our school because of the closing, but the project gave us a focus and something to stay positive about,” explains Principal Nanci Jane Simpson. “It really brought us together as we worked on something meaningful.”
Cardinal Heights is closing but will remain open as a campus of Pauline Johnson until renovations there are completed in September 2016. Depending on where they live, current students will attend Pauline Johnson, Franklin Road, Ridgemount, or Queensdale.
The closing added meaning to the CD project. But it was dedicated to one former staff member: John Galbraith.
John was an Educational Assistant at Cardinal Heights, but also a graduate of the school who was there when it opened. A musician himself, John even met his wife at Cardinal Heights and sent both his children there. Sadly, John passed away from an aggressive form of cancer in the fall. His birthday is June 26, today, officially the last day for Cardinal Heights.
“We wanted to do something special for the students, and were able to give them each a copy of the CD,” says Simpson. Hughey finds it appropriate that the CD project involved students who are not usually recognized for traditional achievements – the kinds of students that John would have encouraged and supported at the school.
“We involved a lot of students, some of whom are not involved in other things at school, and this was a great, safe forum for them,” Hughey says. Simpson loves that it was also an example of inquiry – project-based learning through exploration. “Inquiry isn’t just for a project you do in class,” she says.
Though a project leader, Hughey is gracious and generous in his praise for others who had a big role, like Cardinal Heights teachers Simon Frank and Nicolette Difrancesco, and students Curtis and Sydney Heintzman as well as Steven Tran, who played a gorgeous acoustic instrumental version of Adele’s Someone Like You.
And between each track, Hughey has mixed something special.
There are ambient school sounds interspersed between the songs, like the chatter of students in the hallway, the principal’s actual PA announcements and the sound of the school day’s bells.
When one song ends, the bell rings as listeners move ahead a decade in school life and musical trends. Thanks to the talented students and staff at Cardinal Heights this year, that bell will echo for years to come.
Hear samples of the tracks:
Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
Where is the Love (Black Eyed Peas)
Updated on Friday, June 26, 2015.