Voices Loud, Bodies Moving: CPS hosts Sing Around Columbus Event

Don’t let anyone fool you. Singing is a full-body activity.

That was the message Sing Around Columbus director Adam Goos delivered more than two dozen singers in the Nantkes Auditorium at the Columbus Middle School on Thursday afternoon.

The group will perform in front of friends and family tonight at 6 p.m. in the Nantkes Auditorium. 

“I want you to punch when we sing the ‘Ds’ in Daniel,” Goos, who manages the Little Red Hen Theatre in Wakefield, said imitating the jabs. “Then a combo move for the end. You really need to feel it from your head to your toes.”

Sing Around Columbus is made up of fourth- through sixth-graders and is typically held in the spring.

“The year, we moved things to the fall due to the COVID situation in the spring,” Kerri Jones, Centennial Music Specialist, said. “We also let those sixth graders, who are now seventh graders, to perform. We didn’t want them to miss out.”



Auditions at each elementary school and the middle school were completed last month and rehearsals have been going for three weeks.

There are five main purposes for the Sing Around Columbus Honor Choir: 

To provide talented young singers the opportunity to work with and learn from a specialist in the field of children's voices.

To provide an opportunity for elementary music specialists to observe the work of an artist in the field of children's choral music.

To experience quality children's choral repertoire.

To provide an experience that will musically stimulate the singer.

To allow for young singers to perform with other singers matching pitch and singing in harmony.

Jones is joined by Columbus Public School elementary teachers Brianna Blunk (Emerson and West Park); Zaydia Hirschmann (Emerson and North Park); Cherie Stadler (Lost Creek) and CMS instructors Stephanie Bourek-Hoyt and Celeste Ditter. Along with Goos, the students were accompanied by Katherine Welk of Hastings.