Hitting high notes in the classroom

Pat Arnow

Avid Williams, choir and vocal department director at Brooklyn HS of the Arts, with students (from Left) Sanaya, Ariel and Satara.

His grandmother used to find him singing in front of the mirror, using a broomstick for a microphone.

When he was 3 he started singing at church. Later he was a principal singer and soloist in the Boys Choir of Harlem.

Today, tenor opera singer Avid Williams, who has been making his living with his voice for 10 years, is making music at Brooklyn HS of the Arts.

As director of the choir and the school’s vocal program, this second-year teacher has found his niche.

“The choir sounds great,” Williams said recently, after the talented kids he has nurtured performed classical music with flair at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

“Most of the students I teach are not aware of their God-given talents, and bringing it out in them is one of the biggest high points of teaching,” he said.

It’s hard to believe that Williams — who has played many larger-than-life roles on stage — once found the idea of teaching kids to be intimidating.

Whenever he thought about education as a career he was baffled as to how a person could ever get children to make the refined vocal sounds they needed to.

But a colleague and his childhood teachers, part of the Harlem native’s tight community network, encouraged him to go for it.

First, his former 7th-grade teacher at the Choir Academy in Harlem, Willie Ann Gissendanner, recommended him as New York City coach of the Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics, an NAACP youth education program. He served in that voluntary position for more than five years.

Next, a friend encouraged him to get his master’s degree in education and to look into different teaching licenses.

Now Williams excels at getting children to make refined vocal sounds at the Boerum Hill school.

“There are a lot of students from economically struggling backgrounds who have a very high level of intelligence when it comes to capturing the innate sensitivities of music,” Williams said. “I’m fortunate in that the principal and the assistant principal of the arts are allowing the vocal program to grow and allowing me to grow as a young teacher.”

So far Williams has not had any major challenges as a new teacher, but if he does he can always call his former 3rd-grade teacher from PS 144, Gwendolyn McCloud, who is still part of his life, as well as Gissendanner and 5th-grade teacher Theresa Drayton from Choir Academy, where Williams ranked third in the school’s first graduating class.

He decides on which type of music to teach young singers “depending on sheer ability and intellectual curiosity,” he said.

The repertoire ranges from Bach’s “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” to Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday” to the Broadway tune “I’m Here” from “The Color Purple.”

Students who have been exposed to classical music are often more receptive to singing it than those unfamiliar with it, “who may think it’s uncool. But recognizing the work it takes for it to sound good overtakes any form of uncoolness,” said Williams, who makes sure to show students the similarities between gospel, jazz and classical.

Firm in his belief that the vocal instrument can be trained to do everything, he puts kids through their paces.

“I have a student with an amazing voice for gospel, R&B and jazz, who can now sing classical music well, but the excitement comes out in those other forms because she grew up with them in the church,” he said. “On the other hand I have a student who also grew up with gospel, and I trained her other side, and now her classical voice is much more beautiful than the gospel voice.”

Training the human voice, using music to soothe the souls of kids deemed difficult, inspiring young artists, seeing students go off to college, to performance careers and music-education careers — all are high points for Williams, whose goal is to make his school a top-notch performing arts mecca that city students will vie to attend.

Williams, who signs his correspondence “In music I trust,” has faith that he will find a way.