Pop-Up Choir Invites Anyone to Sing in Downtown Colorado Springs

Unleash your creativity, and your vocal cords, with a pop-up choir in Downtown Colorado Springs.

Not familiar with a pop-up choir?

Participants will learn and sing “Sleep,” by Eric Whitacre, selected for its beauty, hopeful and uplifting harmonies and popularity among vocalists.

Designed to cultivate community with other creatives, the musical pop-up event by Colorado Springs Youth Choir (CSYC) is Sunday, Oct. 11. The pop-up choir is open to anyone, regardless of age or ability.

“We get some people in their 80s and 90s,” says Katy Crumpton, artistic director and conductor. “They say, ‘I used to sing when I was in middle or high school, and I haven’t done it in so long.’”

Crumpton says the pop-up choir is meant to provide a creative outlet for people who aren’t in a formal choir group. Once registered, participants receive an email with a practice music track and access to the sheet music.

“The energy is super positive. A lot of people hug afterwards,” she says. “There is a real magical energy that happens when people sing together and come together and do something at the same time, especially involving music.”

Crumpton was inspired to create the pop-up choir after attending a one-day music collective in New York City shortly after gathering restrictions were lifted from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The whole world was like this sacred thing that was taken from us, and we need to get it back together,” Crumpton says. “I wanted to open that up to our community in Colorado Springs.”

CSYC teens will lead members of the pop-up choir.

On the evening of the event, singers will arrive at the Meanwhile Block, settle in to warm up, get to know each other and practice in sections based on voice part, prior to the performance.

CSYC Provides Creative Outlet for City Youth

Now in its third season, the Colorado Springs Youth Choir provides an un-auditioned choral group for students in seventh through ninth grades and an auditioned group for students in 10th through 12th grades.

“I felt like our city can support more of the arts,” Crumpton says. “We cultivate magical musical moments.”

One of the things that makes CSYC unique is that students collaborate with leaders to select the music and message they deliver at each performance, Crumpton says.

That collaborative spirit extends to other choral groups. For its spring concert, CSYC teamed up with students from Mountainside Elementary and the Colorado Springs Youth Symphony, as well as semi-professional adult groups Good Treble and Choral Song, to deliver a rousing performance.

CSYC also collaborates each year with a visual artist who creates promotional content and hosts an art show at one of CSYC’s performances. This year’s visual artist is Erin Kittelson, whose art uses texture, color and narrative to explore the intersections of memory, pattern, human connection and the emotional landscapes that shape lived experiences.

“It’s important for anybody to be involved in the arts because it’s the pulse of the world,” Crumpton says. “Whether it’s visual art or music or the written word, artists have a handle on what’s going on in the world, and we need to pay attention.”