On Dec. 6, Green Hope hosted a collaborative concert in hopes to create a sense of community in upcoming students who’ll likely enter the chorus group in their high school years. Middle and high schools such as Salem middle, Alston Ridge, Green Hope and Panther Creek will be participating in the upcoming festival to hopefully establish a connection with their future high schools.
All schools worked to choose the songs that will be performed for the concert, which allows the students to collaborate on how to perform the songs. The schools prepared individually for their songs and rehearshed together the day of the concert.
Mr. Botwick, the chorus teacher at Green Hope, discussed how he and fellow chorus teachers collaborated amongst themselves. He said, “It relieves a little bit of the burden off of each chorus teacher to prepare a whole concert for their own.” The concert will consist of each school singing individually then coming together for some combined pieces to allow for an easier process.
Mr. Botwick reflected on the limited preparation time for collaborative concerts because students are preparing for other upcoming performances. Most of the rehearsals happen the day of the concert since they spend a majority of class time learning the music learning the pitches and rhythms of the songs they are preparing.
Currently, students are preparing around 18 songs, but only a few were for the Friday concert. Mr. Botwick states, “There is a lot of preplanning on my end to make sure we have time to learn every song,” and he claimed that this was currently the biggest challenge pertaining to the concert. For practices, the tenor and basses are usually at different class times while sopranos and altos are in another and they don’t usually join till the day of the concert. Time management is a major challenge faced in rehearsals with the separate groups of students not being able to rehearse together till the day of the concert.
Green Hope senior, Caitlin Belington (‘25), is a member of chorus who joined because of her sister. Bellington states, “I didn’t realize how big it would be in my life and how important the community would be to me.” The night of the concert will be the first time that the collection of schools rehearse all together, since each group learned their songs individually. schools will come together and rehearse as everyone learned their songs separately. Belington said,“It will be a new thing hearing it for the first time.” This is because the tenor and basses practice separately from then the sopranos and altos.
Belington said she is most excited to perform Dubula, a song that is made up of an all treble voiced choir, which is composed of mostly women.“It’s just a really fun song, it’s really up beat and super fast,” she stated. Belington also claimed that it’ll be fun for the altos because they got to sing lower, which they don’t normally get to do. She discussed that the most rewarding part was talking to the president and vice president of the Panther Creek choir and being rewarded with new experiences. Her biggest priority pertaining to the choir was her community, experiences and the friends she made there.
Emily Purdy (‘25), the Green Hope chorus president, joined chorus four years ago to find a place to belong among her peers. Upon reflection, she said, “ It has definitely paid off.”. Purdy said she is most excited for the song Galop to be performed, because both middle and high schoolers sing the song together.“It’s a really fun and upbeat song,” she said. During the preparation for the concert, Purdy’s excitement grew because she knew the songs she and her pers performed would be shared with other schools.
The Western Wake Choral festival is a collaborative concert between middle and high schools in western Wake County. New and upcoming freshmen get to build a sense of community among their future peers while the middle schoolers have the opportunity to perform in a higher level chorus to see the future programs that they will be involved with in the future. Chorus teachers strive for the opportunity to collaborate as much as possible to ease the load that comes with creating these concerts.
