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Thirty-two local high schoolers went inside Manifold Studio (owned by Red Hat's Michael Tiemann) in Pittsboro, along with Durham-based band The Beast and the Mallarme Chamber Players, who provided instrumentals. The recording marked the end of a two-week musical theater and vocal summer workshop at UNC, which was also open to about 40 middle schoolers.

The Community Chorus Project was founded by Lauren Hodge in conjunction with UNC and funded, in part, by a $5,000 Innovations grant from the university.

Hodge, who founded the Youth Performing Arts Conservatory at The ArtsCenter, started the project earlier this year but eventually wants to focus on lower income communities. She is hoping to start a version in the Northside neighborhood in early 2012. “Everything we’re doing is basically our first attempt to start raising money for the whole program," she says. She hopes to partner with a record company so that recordings can raise funds that will go back into the program.

The arrangement of "Everybody Hurts" was done by the conductor you see in the YouTube video, Shana Tucker, and Eric Hirsh of The Beast. The soloists are Katie Weddle from Raleigh; Gray Symon, a graduate of Chapel Hill High; and Brad Meir from Raleigh.

"As soon as the recording was finished, we sent it to R.E.M.’s manager, and he just really loved it. And the band loved it," says Hodge.

They loved it so much that the band posted the link on their homepage and on their Facebook site.

Hodge says the high schoolers also recorded an arrangement of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" that is "ridiculously good," but that video is under lock and key until she secures the proper permissions from the artist and the publisher.

The students and their teachers and parents saw it recently at The Varsity, however, where it was privately screened.