Last week on  Wednesday November 15th, was the third annual Chorus Common Threads hosted by our very own, Apex High School. Common Threads brings together high school and middle school students who essentially spend six-seven hours practicing singing together in preparation for the big night. At 7:00 P.M, the auditorium doors closed, and the main performance began. Common Threads includes Apex Middle School, Salem Middle School, Apex Friendship Middle School as well as Apex High School and Apex Friendship High School. There were so many students and so many voices! It seems impossible to perform with so many people. But they pulled it off, and the performance was amazing. How did these hundreds of students perform in unison so well? Well it was all in a day’s work but not really though. 

Once the middle schoolers and non-Apex High high schoolers arrived at the school, the students began to know each other by spending time together. Every high schooler was assigned a middle schooler as a partner, and they played various games for this “field trip” the chorus middle school students were given. After that, they learned the music for the performance and had Q and A time to have any possible questions they had about high school answered by Ms. Copley or high school students hosting or visiting. But there was a ton of musical prep going into these performances. All students have spent weeks and many hours of class time (and outside of class time) to learn this music in the back of their brains and prep for this performance, in order to sound their best. Every school has a different way of learning chorus; the different teachers have different teaching styles, and some students learned a lot from this common threads experience due to the environment of many different kinds of students, and age groups, as well as meeting Ms. Copley and getting to know her unique skill and talent behind her chorus work. 

Common Threads is an exciting time and important performance for all chorus students. It is used mostly to excite middle school chorus students for high school chorus and persuade them into joining chorus in their high school years while expanding  on their skills and career in chorus with so many different opportunities given every year. It may be a little scary and intimidating getting to meet so many high school students because they are so much older and seemingly experienced than you. But the commonality of singing is what brings these chorus students together and unites them for a wonderful experience; for both themselves and every audience member fortunate enough to witness the thrilling concert that took place this past Wednesday evening.