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I always say the South Loop has absolutely everything anyone anywhere might want. For instance, my friend Miriam, who is quite a music aficionado (opera, symphony, et al), also loves to sing. So once a week, she travels a few blocks south and a couple blocks east of her house and sings in a neighborhood community chorus at Sherwood Community Music School.

Sherwood is now run by Columbia College, the biggest landowner in the South Loop, bar none. But it has served music lovers for generations in its old (and then privately owned) spot at 11^th and Michigan--including my now grown daughter when she was a toddler in the 1980s--and now in its newly built building at 13^th and Michigan (where my good friend and State Street neighbor Susan--who has since moved to North Carolina--used to play four-hands piano recitals with another good friend of hers from the neighborhood, Ryan).

Sherwood has served the neighborhood well.

Unfortunately, Miriam invited me too late to the annual Spring Sing on Saturday and I was previously committed to a couple of other gatherings. But what a lineup they had!

Miriam reports that the vocal celebration featured the Sherwood Children’s Chorus singing American Indian, Brazilian, and Italian folk melodies, and a selection from The Sound of Music. And that Sherwood voice students and faculty filled in that part of the program, with some selections of their own.

The Columbia Community Chorus, with which Miriam sang on Saturday and which is a group of amateur singers under the direction of faculty member Mary Martell, completed the concert with selections ranging from “the amusing and lively” (says Miriam) "Comedy Tonight" and "To Life," from Fiddler on the Roof--to the sublime “Ashokan Farewell” and “Come Live With Me and Be My Love,” with the words of 16^th century poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe set to music by Greg Gilpin.

Miriam encouraged me to encourage neighborhood people to come join the chorus. “It’s a jewel in our backyard,” she says. She’s right.

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