New community chorus forming

Guy Lucas, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·2 min read

Jan. 19—HIGH POINT — Participating in a community chorus as a child growing up in Radford, Virginia, changed Wesley Hudson's life.

He learned about different styles of music and people from much different backgrounds than his own — "people I never would have met and still have relationships with," he said. "It's how I fell in love with the idea of singing together and binding hearts."

Those are the kinds of experiences that he said High Point residents have not been able to have since the High Point Community Chorus stopped performing several years ago.

Now Hudson, 52, the director of music ministries for First United Methodist Church on N. Main Street, is organizing a new chorus, the High Point Community Chorale. He plans for it to begin meeting to rehearse each Sunday afternoon beginning Feb. 5 and to hold its first public concert May 7.

Hudson said he had hoped that the other chorus would reorganize and begin performing again after COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings ended. When he talked to people who had been involved with the group and learned that it would not, he began to get the idea to start a new chorus.

The High Point Community Chorale is being organized as an outreach of First United Methodist, but Hudson wants to draw its members from a diverse, interfaith cross-section of the community, people of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds.

He plans for the chorus to hold two big concerts with a variety of music each year — one in the spring and one in the fall — to raise money for local nonprofits, and also to have smaller performances around the community, such as singing the National Anthem at High Point Rockers games or singing holiday music during the annual Uptowne Holiday Stroll.

"The response so far has been incredibly positive," he said.

Hudson came to North Carolina to attend what is now the UNC School of the Arts, where he received a master's of fine arts degree. He and his wife, Allison, a pediatrician, came to High Point 11 years ago.

Hudson said he inherited his love of music.

"My father sang bass in the Fort Knox chorus (while in the Army), and he never stopped singing," he said.