Junior Cassidy Williams has been singing for seven years, and she has found an outlet in the honors choir class. 

“Honors choir is my favorite class. Everyone became friends. We all love to work together in and after school,” Williams said. 

Williams took music teacher Kris Tranter’s regular choir class freshman and sophomore year, and now she has love and passion for the honors class even with the higher expectations. 

The class is harder than the regular choir course, with a more serious focus and tougher music to sing. But there is a welcoming environment with many opportunities for performances and making friends, Williams said.

Tranter decided to create the course to provide his students with more opportunities to help them excel. 

“I’m trying to give our students more opportunities to do collegiate level singing,” Tranter said. 

This is the second year of the full year course, with 39 students currently enrolled. It requires an audition.

Senior Owen Pogany had never taken choir before, but auditioned for the honors class for this year and made it. 

“This is my first year in choir. So far it has been an amazing experience. There have been some challenges to it, but I wouldn’t change it looking back,” Pogany said. 

The choir just came back from their trip to Disney World, where they performed at Disney Springs. 

“Disney was super fun. It wasn’t completely centered around just us singing, but enjoying all types of performances, and I got to spend a lot of time with my friends,” Williams said 

Their next project is the spring concert. The class just began working on the music, Tranter said. Some of the upcoming songs include “Ad Astra,” “Fix You,” and “Over the Rainbow”.

“I’m so excited to learn the music for it,” junior Sam Poznick said. 

The class will also add a boost to the student’s GPA because it is an honors credit. Finding out that it would increase his GPA was what finalized his decision in auditioning for the course, Pogany said. 

Interested students can go to bhsmusicislife.weebly.com, where there is an application and a video audition to sing the National Anthem in the student’s key of choice. The application for next year’s class is due by Feb. 17, recorded on video for submission. 

There are no course prerequisites required for the course.