Women’s choir enrollment more than doubles

By: Annebeth Ahrenholz

There’s a bigger song emerging from the music wing this year, but even though the women’s choir has more than doubled from the 36 girls in the fall of 2012 to the 82 girls enrolled this fall, choir director Elliot Kranz said that teaching that many girls at one time isn’t any different than teaching any other ensemble. There are just more girls.

He said he believes there are a number of reasons for such an increase in numbers in the group. One is because of the success of the women’s choir in the past. The All City Choir event including secondary students is also a reason students are motivated to to do choir after seeing the CFHS choir perform.

The two junior highs have very strong choir programs as well, making it more likely for them to stick with choir going into high school.

Kranz said the more girls in choir, the stronger it is for the program. “Any time you add numbers, it makes it more difficult to sing in tune and sound like one voice. But we work on this from day one in rehearsal, and hopefully our hard work pays off throughout the year.”

He said he does not think that having so many girls will be any type of problem and hopes that the choir will keep increasing every year.

Junior Anna Stillman said she thinks it’s awesome to have so many girls in the choir and they are starting to sing very well as a group, although at times it is hard to have a good balance of sound with so many voices at one time.

“It can be distracting at times. I love choir, and when other people continue to talk while we are trying to sing and learn new pieces, it can be distracting.”

But in the long run, Stillman also said she thinks that having more girls in choir will make them better as a whole because they have a lot of strong upperclassmen singers and some very talented sophomores with good voices coming to help them out.

Stillman chose to take choir again this year because, “I’ve always really enjoyed singing and did it in junior high for two years and decided to try it again in the high school, and I’m so happy I did. It’s been so much fun, and Mr. Kranz is a great teacher.”

Stillman’s comment echoes that of many other choir members who said that Mr. Kranz being the choir director is part of the reason that so many girls have chosen to go out for choir in the past few years.

Many students said they believe that he is a wonderful teacher and genuinely cares for his students and wants each and every one of them to succeed.

“Mr. Kranz is a great teacher and cares about each choir so much, and you can really see that while he is teaching us. It’s great to have him as a teacher,” Stillman said.