COLOR MUSIC Children’s Choir Finds Strength in “You Raise Me Up”
Dnipro-based COLOR MUSIC Children’s Choir brings young voices together for a rendition of “You Raise Me Up” that moves from quiet reflection toward a soaring refrain. Shared before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the recording has acquired added poignancy for listeners hearing its message of comfort and collective strength during the war.
The song gives the choir a powerful shape to work with. It begins in weariness and stillness, then opens into a chorus about finding strength through someone else’s support. In the hands of a children’s ensemble, that movement feels especially direct: the words are personal, but the answer arrives in many voices rather than one. The arrangement lets the familiar melody carry that change in scale.
COLOR MUSIC is based in Dnipro, Ukraine, and was founded by Olena and Oleksandr Petrykov. Oleksandr is credited with arranging and producing the audio for this recording. Those details matter to the sound of a choir cover: individual voices need space to sing the story, while their entrances and shared phrases need to feel like parts of one musical thought.
“You Raise Me Up” is closely associated with Secret Garden and Josh Groban, whose versions helped make its refrain widely recognizable. That familiarity leaves little mystery about where the melody is headed. The interest here lies in the journey there: a line about waiting in silence becomes the starting point for a gathering of voices, making the eventual chorus feel like a response to the verse.
The refrain’s images of mountains and stormy seas could easily invite an oversized performance. COLOR MUSIC instead has the expressive resource that only a choir can offer: one singer’s need can be voiced by a group without losing the song’s intimacy. Listen to how the repeated title phrase changes its meaning as it returns, sounding less like a promise made by one person and more like one sustained together.
Watch the performance
The first verse is essential to that effect. Before the song reaches its expansive chorus, it describes the simple act of waiting for someone to sit nearby. There is no grand rescue in that moment. The comfort is presence, and the children’s shared delivery makes room for that modest idea even as the arrangement prepares for a much larger emotional release.
When the chorus arrives, the music shifts from inward reflection to an open declaration. The melody rises with the words, giving the singers a natural way to increase intensity without changing the song’s central thought. Its strength comes from the contrast: the same voice that admits to feeling burdened can imagine standing higher because it is not standing alone.
The later verse asks more of the performance than a simple repeat of the opening. Its restless-heart imagery moves beyond the immediate trouble of the first lines and toward wonder. Sung after the first chorus, those words suggest that reassurance has not ended the searching. The choir can return to the refrain with that feeling still present, which gives its repetitions a purpose beyond volume.
Repetition is one of this song’s defining musical tools. Each return to the chorus offers another chance to hear how a straightforward melody can hold an expanding group sound. The words stay familiar, but their placement changes: after quiet reflection, they sound like relief; after the second verse, they carry the weight of everything the singers have already expressed.
The recording also shows why a children’s choir is such a fitting vehicle for a song about receiving help. The performance does not need to present its young singers as invulnerable. Its emotional pull comes from their ability to sing about dependence plainly, then make the answer audible through ensemble singing. Support is not merely the subject of the lyric; it is built into the act of singing together.
The timing of this recording gives it a distinct place in the choir’s story. COLOR MUSIC had shared the video before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Hearing it during the war may bring new associations to its language of burdens, courage and companionship, but the performance stands on its own as a carefully arranged interpretation of a well-known song.
That distinction leaves listeners free to respond to the music as it is. The recording does not need to serve as a scene from a wartime concert for its words to resonate now. A familiar song can gather meanings its singers could not have anticipated, especially when its central image is one person helping another through a difficult passage.
COLOR MUSIC later returned to “You Raise Me Up” in a different setting. On January 18, 2023, the choir performed it with Charlotte Perrelli at the United With Ukraine charity concert in Stockholm. That performance places the song in an explicitly public act of support for Ukraine, while the earlier cover remains a separate recording with its own musical character.
Putting the two performances alongside each other draws attention to the song’s flexibility. It can be heard as a quiet expression of gratitude or sung outward to a room assembled around a shared cause. In either setting, its appeal rests on a clear exchange: someone acknowledges a limit, and someone else helps them reach beyond it.
For a different listening perspective, follow a single melodic line through the changing ensemble sound. The individual voice gives the words immediacy, while the group’s response gives them breadth. A choir can make those two impressions coexist without turning a personal lyric into something impersonal. In this cover, that relationship between the individual and the collective is central to the song’s reassuring character.
In COLOR MUSIC’s earlier cover, that exchange belongs to the choir itself. The verses give the singers space to name uncertainty; the recurring chorus lets them answer in unison and harmony. The result is moving not because the song denies hardship, but because its young voices make companionship sound like a source of strength.
More performances to enjoy
Watch COLOR MUSIC Children’s Choir perform “You Raise Me Up” with Charlotte Perrelli at the United With Ukraine charity concert in Stockholm on January 18, 2023.
For another side of the Dnipro choir’s repertoire, watch COLOR MUSIC sing “Shchedryk” in this video from Suspilne Dnipro.
