I am trying to get a count of the number of columns in a table

I am trying to get a column count of the number of columns in a table called Soloists; the database is myCDDB.

I understand that the information is to be found in INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS and I think that the following select statement should be used:

Select Count(*) From INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS Where TABLE_NAME='Soloists' and TABLE_SCHEMA = 'myCDDB'"

but how do I get a count value from this statement.

Your query is already doing exactly what you need.

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'myCDDB'
AND TABLE_NAME = 'Soloists';

COUNT(*) returns a single scalar value ? the number of columns in the table. Just execute the query and read the result.

If you need the value programmatically (e.g., in a stored routine), use SELECT ... INTO:

SELECT COUNT(*)
INTO @col_count
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'myCDDB'
AND TABLE_NAME = 'Soloists';

For ad-hoc checks, tools like dbForge Studio for MySQL also expose the column list and count directly in the table designer/properties, which avoids querying INFORMATION_SCHEMA altogether.