‚She totally changed my life and encouraged me to pursue music‘
It’s early afternoon at Riverview High School and Monica MacNeil’s music students are staging one of their regular coffeehouse shows.
Elizabeth Kaiser-Cofiant is midway through her solo rendition of Radiohead’s ’90s angst anthem “Creep” when two unexpected guests join her onstage: MacNeil with her saxophone and practice teacher Sarah Walker on the cajón.
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“And that’s why Mrs. MacNeil’s music class is the best — even the teachers perform,” observes student Amy Smith, who opened the show with a piano performance before assuming emcee duties.
Many other people share Smith’s opinion, including the members of the East Coast Music Association, who recently recognized MacNeil with a Stompin’ Tom Award, noting that her “innovative, inclusive programming at Riverview High School has transformed music education in Cape Breton.”
MacNeil said it was a “big surprise” when she found out she was the Cape Breton recipient of the award, which recognizes one person in each of the ECMA’s five geographical regions who has made a long-term contribution to the East Coast music industry and has paved the road for today’s artists.
“I had no idea any of that was in the works. I don’t like a lot of focus on me because it’s about the students, but when they called, I was a little emotional because it’s been a long career and a rewarding career and it’s nostalgic just thinking over the years of all the students that have made great music in the school.”
Walker is one of those students.
The award-winning actress was thinking about becoming a French teacher before she took MacNeil’s music class when she was in Grade 12 at Riverview in 2019.
“She totally changed my life and encouraged me to pursue music — and I’ve done that,” said Walker, who graduated from the Acadia University School of Music and is now enrolled in the bachelor of education program.
“I remember she just said, ‘Why not music?’ Something just clicked, and I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t even know how, where or what,’ and she just gave me all the information and that’s kind of how that went. But I think, generally, she just creates such a openness in her room. As a student teacher watching her — I knew this when I had her, but now watching her — it’s like there’s kids who barely talk at school and she has them singing. And it’s just so beautiful, the atmosphere she creates in her room. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen.”
Walker said her favourite memory as MacNeil’s student was when her accompanist cancelled days before she was scheduled to sing Rita MacNeil’s “Working Man” at a fundraising concert.
“I was in her music class and I just told her I’m singing at a concert this weekend and I have no one to play piano for me. She said ‘OK. Well, let’s play piano.’ So she just taught me four chords on a Wednesday so that I could practise it and go play in the community on Sunday,” Walker recalled.
“She just has this way of encouraging students and it’s just so beautiful. It worked for me and I see it all the time with kids in her classroom. There’s always the kids that come in and they have talent and they’re the ones that want to sing all the time. They want to play. They’re outgoing and they do all this stuff. But then there’s some that come through and they’re shy. They don’t necessarily have the confidence to get onstage and do things, and that’s why these coffeehouses are so great because it’s a little bit more of low stakes. And if Monica hears you singing or playing in the hallway and you have talent, she wants everyone to hear it. I’ve seen her just put a mic up to somebody and let them keep singing. It’s so awesome. It’s just so cool the way she does things.”
MacNeil laughs when she’s reminded of Walker’s makeshift musical lesson.
“I play piano so I can teach this more easily than I can simplify things on guitar. But anyway, she’s very talented, obviously. She has a really great ear and if you know three chords you can get away with a lot. I’m not saying it was an advanced accompaniment, but she would have given a amazing performance,” she said.
“She really did do that. She learned how to play a piano and then she was accompanying herself days later. But that’s also a Sarah Walker story. She’s done amazing things in her young life.”
Walker isn’t the only one of MacNeil’s former students singing her praises.
Amelie Sampson, the daughter of Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Gordie Sampson, attended Riverview when her family left Nashville during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I got to go to my dad’s high school, which was the craziest. It was the biggest blessing in disguise, I tell everyone. It wasn’t until then that I really was able to come out of my shell. I did the Music 12 program there with Monica MacNeil and she was one of my favourite music teachers I’ve ever had. Through that program, I was really able to like come out of my shell and I actually wrote my first song with my dad for that class, the final project, and then my dad and I started writing a lot together,” said Sampson, who recently released her debut single “Houdini.”
MacNeil said she was surprised to learn Sampson’s time in her class had such an impact.
“I had no idea that Amelie felt like that. She’s, of course, an incredibly talented songwriter and singer and incredibly natural, which makes total sense. But I didn’t know that her time at Riverview meant that much to her, actually,” said MacNeil, who began teaching at Riverview in 1997 and has since added Rock Class and Traditional Celtic Class to the curriculum.
Her students go on overnight outings to Mabou for square dances and for the past six years, the band has travelled to New York where they close each variety-style performance with a mini square set.
“We square-danced in the Bronx and Harlem and Queens and Manhattan,” MacNeil said with a laugh.
In addition, Riverview hosts its own square dance where her husband Sheumas and brother-in-law Kyle MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils perform.
MacNeil, who grew up in Antigonish to Cape Breton-born parents, said her goal has always been to make her classroom feel like a ceilidh.
“My mom’s from Iona and there was a lot of fiddle music but I played saxophone. So when I was in my 20s, I started messing around with playing fiddle tunes on the saxophone. I had an alto then I bought a soprano from my old high school and it really sounded very cool. It’s like a bagpipe-ish almost kind of quality. So that’s my thing. That’s what I do. So I’d be going to house parties and people were pulling out their fiddles and then I pulled out my saxophone. But nobody told me to put it away, so I was lucky,” she said.
“Everyone was welcoming. It was all different levels of skill but it wasn’t a competitive thing, it was just a participatory thing. It’s just really important to make music together and it’s so much fun. That’s the attitude I want in my class. Everyone is welcome and I want it as comfortable as possible. You just ease people into it. Once you see other people doing it, then you want to participate — just like at a kitchen party.”
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