A music class project at a 性视界传媒 school has scored the "Passion Prize" in a Canada-wide contest.

Students of Betty Huff Elementary performed and recorded a version of "Everything Is Boring," by Toronto-based band The Beaches, to win an award in the Canadian Music Challenge competition, organized by CBC Music and MusiCounts to support music education.

Their three-minute video of the song earned the MusiCounts Innovation Passion Prize, given to a performance that showcases "the diversity of what music education in Canada can look like."

The mid-December contest win comes with $5,000 for music equipment and instruments at the North 性视界传媒 school, on Huntley Avenue.

"The students are excited," said music teacher Joe Franco, "and we're still watching the views of our video kind of tick up as more people watch it, thousands of views now. We're still anticipating the money coming, too, and what that means for our school."

On Youtube, the winning video is posted on the CBC Music Class channel.

Students recorded parts separately for the best possible sound quality using existing equipment 鈥� gear that will be upgraded with the contest cash, to allow for live multi-track recording.

"We spent nearly the entire three months learning and recording our parts, about half of the time learning how to play our parts (in some cases, learning how to play the instrument the first time), and the rest of the time recording each 'layer' of the song," Franco explained.  

"We captured video of the students鈥� live performances and supplemented with acting in alternative settings, for a music video-style end product. Our goal is for our covers to be composed of just students, no accompaniment by me, so that鈥檚 what we鈥檝e done. Everything you hear was played by the students."

The "rock band" style of music education at Betty Huff works to educate the kids, he said, and the class will begin to write and record their own songs in a similar way.

"This is third time doing this Challenge," said Franco, who has taught at Betty Huff since 2019. "I've taken what I learned in the previous two years and put in a lot of thought about how to approach this. We were really able to showcase the kids and their skills and be creative with the videos, which were really fun to make."

The music students also entered performances of 鈥淩eggae Party鈥� by Kirk Diamond, 鈥淗ere and Now鈥� by Aysanabee and 鈥淟ife is鈥� by Arkells.