NEW SHARON — With their heads bobbing, their hands up high and moving from side-to-side to the music Monday, students at Cape Cod Hill School followed along with rapper and saxophone player Devin Ferreira.

Even Principal Darlene Paine and staff members got into the music.

Ferreira, who grew up in New Sharon and graduated in 2007 from Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, came to entertain students and teach them about music. Later in the morning, he planned to teach fifth- and sixth-graders how to produce music and write a song.

It was in this elementary school where he got his first saxophone and learned how to play, Ferreira, of Boston, Mass., said prior to beginning the show.

“This is a really special reunion for me,” he said.

Sixth-grader Parker Foster helped Ferreira get ready.

“I got to help him set up everything,” he said. “I think he is pretty good, if you ask me.”

Ferreira writes his own music and planned to open with his song “No Tomorrow.”

When teacher Jennifer Ladd entered the gymnasium with three boys, Ferreira tried to coax them into saying “boom, crash” in a rap rhythm.

Ferreira handed over the microphone to Ladd and she began to keep time and say the words “boom, crash” as Ferreira rapped to the music.

His mother, Patti Murray, a third- and fourth- grade teacher at the school, got the students going with some of her own moves before her son took over.

“I taught him everything he knows,” Murray told the students as they settled on to the gym floor.

When Ferreira asked how many kids are from New Sharon, the majority raised their hands.

“This is the best place to grow up,” he said before he began.

Ferreira is the director of music at the Boys and Girls Club in Boston.

dperry@sunjournal.com

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