Martha Wainwright and friends are staging a benefit concert for Centennial Academy

Students will accompany the musicians in a concert Friday at Le National featuring Martha and Rufus Wainwright, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Ariane Moffatt and Jordan Officer, with Petit hosting.

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When Martha Wainwright was talking to Angela Burgos, head of Centennial Academy, about ways to raise money and awareness about the school, Wainwright immediately though of organizing a concert.

“I thought of the concert because it’s something I have experience doing,” said Wainwright in a recent interview at Centennial, which is now located just to the west of Collège de Montréal on Sherbrooke St. W. in a building that used to be a home for retired priests.

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“My brother Rufus and I raise money with our Christmas concerts and so we have a model that we’ve done for many years now,” Wainwright said. “So when I was talking to Angela and different parents and the board, and they were saying, ‘How do we get the city to know about us? How do we raise money?’, I just put my hand up and said, ‘Well, one way I know how to raise money and raise awareness is by doing these concerts and I could help out with that. That’s what I could contribute.’ And they were like, ‘Who can you get?’ And I said I can get some artists, some friends, and we have several parents here, like Marie-Pierre Arthur, whose kid goes here, and (actor and comic) Martin Petit, and of course they’re going to participate in the concert. But the main thing is, yes, we will get some stars to sell the tickets because that’s really important, but let’s hear from the kids. And let’s hear what they can do.”

Martha Wainwright is shown on Monday, May 27, 2024.
“My brother Rufus and I raise money with our Christmas concerts and so we have a model that we’ve done for many years now,” says Martha Wainwright, seen on Monday, May 27, 2024. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal Gazette

The result is a concert on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Le National (1220 Ste-Catherine St. E.) featuring Martha and Rufus Wainwright, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Ariane Moffatt and Jordan Officer, with Petit hosting. There will also be students from the school on stage accompanying the musicians.

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The students at Centennial have learning disabilities. Martha Wainwright’s 14-year-old son, Arcangelo, is in Secondary 2 at Centennial and she said the high school has been a godsend for him. When he was finishing primary school at the Mackay Centre, Wainwright started looked for an appropriate high school and she couldn’t find many good options.

“I did a little bit of research and this school came up in my research … and I found it myself,” Wainwright said. “It seemed kind of not so much on the radar as it should be, which is why we are doing this concert. Because after being here almost two years, it’s been a very good experience and I’m glad that we fell upon it. I think this school really seems to, from my point of view, provide different kinds of benefits for a lot of different types of kids. That’s why I thought the city needs to know more about it.”

Burgos said a big issue with financing is that the school’s population is half anglophone, half francophone and they don’t receive government funding for the francophone students. That’s because the study body was completely anglophone until 2016. The school, which for years was in N.D.G. but lost its building there, had to spend around $10 million to renovate its current location and much of that is not paid off.

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Burgos said 95 per cent of the students have some kind of learning disability, from attention deficit disorder to high-functioning autism to dyslexia.

“It was always that second chance school for kids that are not fitting in anywhere else,” Burgos said.

Elisa Schwarz, who is helping organize the concert, has a son at Centennial in Secondary 5.

“It’s to raise awareness about this approach to education which in my case I think is one of the main reasons my son is finishing high school in five years, and was accepted into CEGEP in the first round of applications, which is not necessarily what we expected with the challenges he’s faced over the years,” Schwarz said.

She said there just wasn’t enough support for her son, who has attention deficit disorder, in the public high school he went to in Secondary 1 and 2.

After the conversation with Wainwright, the singer headed to the music room in the basement to join Arthur and Moffatt, and they led a group of students through a rehearsal of Moffatt’s 2008 hit Réverbère, with Wainwright and Arthur coaching the kids on the background vocals, while Moffatt played the keyboards and sang the lead vocals.

Wainwright has been coming in on and off for the past couple of months to work with the kids preparing the show and said it has been a great experience.

“This is a smaller school and the music teachers are great, but they don’t have a big band,” Wainwright said. “It’s been totally great for me. It resembles some of the things I’ve done at (her Mile End venue) Ursa with my kids choir there.”

To buy tickets to the concert, visit the show’s site.

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