A new CD is about to be released on Vashon, featuring the talents of 450 Island musicians playing a breathtaking range of instruments while telling the story of a brave boy’s journey through the Amazon rainforest.

The CD, “The Whistling Monster,” also showcases the high, clear voices of gifted Island singers, and in an enviable feat, all 12 songs on the 42-minute disk are original works, composed by the players and singers.

But what is most remarkable is that the CD was made not by music professionals, but rather, almost the entire student body of Chautauqua Elementary School.

Andy James, Chautauqua’s music teacher, has worked with first- through fifth-graders at the school since September to create “The Whistling Monster,” and now he’s ready to unveil the CD at two listening parties to be held this weekend at the school.

James — who is in his first year as Chautauqua’s music teacher — is a boyish-looking 40-year-old, with a laid back smile and a dry sense of humor that sometimes masks his fierce commitment to his work.

“This is the job I want to marry,” he said, reflecting back on the past nine months.

James came up with the idea for “The Whistling Monster” almost immediately after he learned he’d landed the job of teaching music at the elementary school. The project was a way for him to provide structure to the wide-open job of educating hundreds of kids about music. And building the project around a story was an ideal construct, he added.

“I learned when I was a substitute teacher, that if I couldn’t get a room to be quiet, all I had to say was ‘once upon a time,’ and the all the kids would start shushing each other,” he said.

The process began last September, with James reading the South American folk tale “The Whistling Monster” to his students, one classroom at a time, as they made their weekly trips to his music classroom. He then asked the children to help him map out the story on the walls of the classroom. Soon, he said, they began composing and recording music based on the story.

Chautauqua’s music room boasts an impressive array of percussion instruments, including xylophones, metallophones, marimbas, glockenspiels and conga drums, so James recruited two accomplished Island drummers, Bill Moyer and Geoff Johns, to work with fifth-graders to create some of the most complex drum passages in “The Whistling Monster.”

Other fifth-graders work-ed with Lelavision, an Island performance duo comprised of Ela Lamblin and Leah Mann, to create new instruments out of found objects.

Working with James and his students was a joyful experience, Mann said.

“It made me think I need to forget all my processes and just start thinking like a kid again,” she said

James said he was grateful to have Island musicians take part in the project.

“If you gave me the run of the whole country, how could I have come up with better people than Lelavision and Geoff Johns and Bill Moyer?” he asked.

But he also admitted he wasn’t sure, at first, if the wildly collaborative process would work.

“I felt like I was opening a door to a room, and I didn’t know what was on the other side,” he said. “I really didn’t know what I would get.”

Some of James’ students said that they didn’t understand what they were doing early on.

“I thought this was going to take a month and then we’d be done with it,” said fifth-grader Jaxon Rollins.

“I thought he’d just put some notes in front of us and we’d play them, but it was way more fun than that,” said Dawit Tuller-Ross, another fifth grader.

Fourth-grader Kelly Douglas leapt to her feet to imitate how James had jumped around and pointed at students during the recording process.

“That was my favorite part,” she said.

James said he couldn’t have tackled the project without the help of Partners in Education, which funded his request to purchase a small digital recorder. Another grant, from Vashon Allied Arts’ Artists in the Schools program, paid for Moyer, Johns and Lelavision to be guest instructors.

The Vashon PTSA paid for several other Island musicians to take part as well. Acclaimed musician Ian Moore mixed and mastered the CD, and extra instrumental instruction for students came from Kim Thal, Maggie Laird and Terri Garrett.

The result, said James, is “real music — sometimes scary, sometimes sad, sometimes thrilling, sometimes sweet.”

The true stars, he added, are his students. “Every sound you hear is made by kids at Chautauqua,” he said — with one exception. He plays the part of the whistling monster.

On a recent Sunday afternoon he went to school to record the “incredible groaning sound” made when he pushed the iron gate to Chautauqua’s parking lot back and forth.

That sound wound up in the final mix as the CD’s title character, something James decided was OK, even though it wasn’t created by his students.

“I think it’s appropriate for me to be the whistling monster,” he said.

James said he hopes to work on a similar project next year at Chautauqua — if he continues to be the school’s music teacher. That might not happen, however, because James is one of several teachers in the district who has received a pink slip: If the school district’s severe budget shortfall is not resolved, James’ job will go to another teacher with more seniority.

But even in the face of such uncertainty, James is doing his part to help raise money for the district.

Copies of “The Whistling Monster” will be sold at two listening parties this weekend and will then go on sale at Vashon Island Music and the school. Proceeds will go to the school district’s general fund, which pays teachers’ salaries.

And if he’s laid off, he hopes to find a way to continue working with children to make music.

“It turns out to be just like making music with people,” he joked. “It’s fun.”

Release parties for “The Whistling Monster” will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13, in Chautauqua’s multi-purpose room, where the CD will be on sale for $12.