Northern Ontario music class taking Tchaikovsky to new heights

Performing music with basketballs? A high school teacher in Espanola is finding creative ways to practice with her music class. Watch Ian Campbell’s report.

ESPANOLA — High school music classes have certainly had their challenges during COVID-19 but one teacher has found a creative way around it while keeping her students safe.

Tracy Marks teaches music at Espanola High School. She was surfing on the internet one day looking for new and inventive ways to teach. Students at the time were not able to use woodwind instruments because of the pandemic.

"I saw a video of some students playing with basketballs and some music and I thought that it would just be fantastic, we have some athletes in the music class and I knew that they would really enjoy that and the non-athletes, it would be something that helped with their coordination," said Marks.

She told the class they would be performing Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker' by basketball and their viral performance was born.

"I always enjoy all of Ms. Marks' ideas. She has come up with many creative ways so that we can have fun in music class when we weren't able to play our instruments, so I was kind of excited to see how this would play out," said Grade 10 student Hope Brohart.

Students lined up, as they would any other performance, but for this one, their instrument was a basketball.

Over the course of the one-minute performance, they carefully laid out a choreographed number, each bounce of the ball keeping beat with the music, each dribble teaching them about tempo.

"I thought it was really creative, I never heard of it before and it almost seemed like two things that would clash together but the more we talked about it, and thought about how it would work, and how it could enhance our music skills, I thought it would be a really good idea," added grade 10 student Isabella Jacques.

Both students are avid basketball players and decided to use this as an opportunity to combine two things they love.

The performance has been a hit with many inside the school, both staff and students.

There has also been some good news since the performance was filmed. The class found out this week that they'll be able to perform their instruments together as a group again, with special masks and COVID-distancing in place.

But both students say they're confident this won't spell an end to their basketball band.

"I think that it's not the end, Ms. Mark always has some crazy idea up her sleeve and it's always an adventure in her class," Brohart  said.

"We've done some rhythm sticks, we've played on chairs, we've done some rhythm drumming on buckets and things like that - anything that just keeps their rhythm chops up," Marks said.