The Cho­rus Project is the sort of oppor­tu­ni­ty par­ents dream about—talent-based, high pro­file, and helmed by vision­ary adults in tune with teenagers’ emo­tion­al and pre-pro­fes­sion­al needs. The select few—there are 39, lead­ing one to won­der what hap­pened to num­ber 40—range in age from 14–18. They hail from a vari­ety of back­grounds, com­ing togeth­er after school and over the sum­mer to sing, and ulti­mate­ly record, choral arrange­ments of rock and pop hits, orches­trat­ed by well known musi­cians. The 1970s Lan­g­ley Schools Music Project is a big influ­ence, as is the tele­vi­sion show Glee.

Their fresh-faced, ortho­don­tia-enhanced take on the David Byrne / St.Vincent col­lab­o­ra­tion “Who,” above, embod­ies the Cho­rus Project approach, gar­ner­ing St. Vin­cen­t’s stamp, or rather, Tweet, of approval.

Byrne recent­ly advised young musi­cans to expect that retain­ing free­dom and cre­ative con­trol means tak­ing a finan­cial hit. How com­fort­ing to find Cho­rus Project founder Lau­ren Brom­ley Hodge ennu­mer­at­ing that path’s alter­nate rewards:

 Music is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, cross­ing cul­tur­al and income bar­ri­ers. Singing in a cho­rus cre­ates com­mu­ni­ty, friend­ship and trust. In a soci­ety where arts based edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties are dras­ti­cal­ly reduced and threat­ened, this music project gives young singers the chance to learn about singing, per­form­ing and record­ing from musi­cians and teach­ers.

Cul­tur­al and income bar­ri­ers aren’t the only bound­aries music tran­scends. As one Metafil­ter user remarked after view­ing the Cho­rus Pro­jec­t’s spin on The Kinks’ “Water­loo Sun­set,” arranged by the dBs’ Chris Stamey:

Can some­one let that ado­les­cent boy singing lead on “Water­loo Sun­set” know that my six­teen year-old self called and his heart is bro­ken from the crush he’ll nev­er be able to say hel­lo to?

Because sob.

See, kids? You don’t need leather pants or facial hair to be cool!

My favorite Cho­rus Project per­for­mance thus­far is their cov­er of the Jack­son 5’s  “I Want You Back.” The puri­ty of those open­ing bars remind­ed me of high school and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in equal parts. I dug the cin­der blocks in the back­ground. I appre­ci­at­ed the deep look of con­cen­tra­tion upon soloist Presyce Baez’s face, as well as the cat­like, canary-stuffed expres­sion of his part­ner, Ally Copen­haver, bid­ing her time until the one-and-a-half minute mark when… leapin’ lizards! That kid’s got an impres­sive set of pipes, mak­ing it all the more grat­i­fy­ing to see her show­ing up in a sup­port­ing capac­i­ty else­where in her cho­rus’s oeu­vre.

You can enjoy more of the Cho­rus Pro­jec­t’s videos here, after which you can move to Raleigh-Durham, where project Sea­mus Ken­ney, leads a week­ly, drop-in Pop­up Cho­rus for adults.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Teens Pon­der Mean­ing of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can’t sing, but she can crank out the zines like nobody’s busi­ness. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

In one of its final acts of 2013, the New York City Coun­cil got with the times, pass­ing a ban on poly­styrene foam food con­tain­ers and non-biodegrad­able pack­ing peanuts.

The wide­ly hailed reform isn’t slat­ed to go into effect for anoth­er year, osten­si­bly to give the con­tain­er indus­try  a chance to squeeze into its envi­ron­men­tal­ist suit. (Good luck with that.)

The delay also affords those of us who live here ample time to stock­pile the offend­ing sub­stance for future home­made musi­cal instru­ments.

If you’re fret­ting over a rel­a­tive lack of instru­ment build­ing expe­ri­ence, relax.Three min­utes is more than enough time for John Bertles, com­pos­er, arts edu­ca­tor and founder of Bash the Trash, to show you how you can make beau­ti­ful music from (most­ly) scav­enged mate­ri­als. (Entire­ly scav­enged, should you luck into a sup­ply of giant rub­ber bands. I pre­sume you have access to the more advanced ver­sion’s paper clips and left­over chop­sticks. That alone jus­ti­fies your soon-to-be Sty­ro-free Pan­da Express deliv­ery habit.)

If you’ve been build­ing rub­ber band gui­tars since nurs­ery school, Bertles’ video les­son still mer­its a lis­ten, to hear how the sort of sounds prac­ticed fin­gers are able to coax from these hum­ble mate­ri­als.

PS: Lest we get hung up on tech­ni­cal­i­ties: Sty­ro­foam is a trade­marked poly­styrene prod­uct of Dow Chem­i­cal. To quote Bertles, who has gen­uine claims on giv­ing it a mean­ing­ful sec­ond life, “great mate­r­i­al for build­ing musi­cal instruments…terrible for the earth.”

Note: If the video above intrigues you, we’d hearti­ly rec­om­mend that you vis­it our pre­vi­ous posts — The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash and A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Above you can watch John mak­ing a card­board tube gui­tar.

Ayun Hal­l­i­day pledges to rock one of these in the 2014 Coney Island Mer­maid Parade. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday