If you are in the Cox Activities Center at Northeast Community College on Monday and Wednesday evenings, you might hear show tunes floating down the hallways. If you decide you want to find where the music is coming from, you will eventually find room 105 and if you are curious enough to peer through the door’s windows, you will see students singing and dancing. You have stumbled upon Northeast’s hidden gem.

Northeast Singer’s Express is the show choir on campus that holds auditions every fall. Some students audition just for their love of performing like Jordan Sager who “love[s] to share my love of music with people” while others like Jenna Hemenway also have scholarships, but either way they have fun. Even though most of the students have jobs as well of school, they make their schedules work out. Priorities come first and their first priority is school.

Northeast Singer’s Express travels to different schools within a four-hour radius of Norfolk to perform in front of elementary and high school students. Some of the schools they visit are in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, and even Minnesota. The Director of Choral Music Activities, Dr. Linda Boullion, sends out letters to the schools to see which ones want the show choir to come and perform for them and the schools decide which day and time works best for them. Dr. Boullion gathers the names of the schools that said yes and arranges them in a schedule that works for everyone.

Northeast has had a choir on campus since the college was first established though there was just one choir in the beginning that was both instrumental and vocal called The Swing Set.   Eventually, new personnel decided to split instrumental and vocal so students could explore different styles of music. Now there is the concert band, a concert choir, Ebony and Crimson, Northeast Singer’s Express of course, and others. Show choir and concert choir have their differences, the most obvious is the dancing, but concert is also more formal than show choir. That way, both introvert and extrovert singers have a choice to choose which one they are more comfortable with.

Students and faculty say Northeast Singer’s Express puts on a wonderful show and it makes it even more amazing when you know that the students choreograph some of their own dances. They prepare all year for their five-day Spring Tour so their performances will sure to be spectacular.