Gloria Lenhoff gives first completely classical recital at Meek Auditorium of the University of Mississippi. The following article announcing the recital brought a standing room crowd to her performance. Gloria, a true professional, combined her warm Williams syndrome personality to capture the hearts of her audience. Parts of the recital were recorded for a documentary to be shown in Japan in March.
From "Oxford Town," an Entertainment Weekly of the Oxford Eagle, Issue #493, January 23-30, 2003 Pages 10 and 11. Cover page photograph of Gloria Lenhoff not included.
A Passion for Performing
by Emily Main
At just about five feet tall, Gloria Lenhoff’s slight figure belies her powerful singing voice. Her non-assuming presence and mild demeanor make it difficult to believe that this 48-year-old woman has performed all over the world for the likes of senators and Hollywood celebrities; that she has appeared in virtually every major media outlet from PBS to CBS; that she has a repertoire so vast that her parents have lost count of the number of pieces she knows, which, by the way, stands at over 2,000; and that she can sing in 30 different languages, including Japanese, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Yet, it is all true, and has been since Gloria’s parents, Sylvia and Howard Lenhoff, first started encouraging her musical talents at the age of 11. "We noticed that she liked music, but so did her brother who was two years younger than her," recalls Howard. "We thought that was normal to all children. But there was something special about the way she retained music and was on pitch all the time."
And so, as the story goes, a star was born. Sylvia and Howard quickly discovered Gloria’s unique abilities, which included a musical talent so refined that she only needs to hear a piece of music to learn the words, notes, and rhythm for life and an ear so acute that Gloria is one of those rare, one-in-ten thousand people with perfect pitch.
What’s most intriguing about Gloria’s musical talent is that it has developed under the shadow of a rather uncommon disorder called Williams syndrome, a condition that has left her unable to perform simple tasks such as tying her shoes and unable to perform rather important musical tasks such as reading music. And while Gloria’s father credits Williams syndrome with giving his daughter perfect pitch, it has also posed the greatest challenge to her career, as Gloria has had to deal with an innate, societal bias towards the mentally handicapped.
The Lenhoff’s first encounter with this was during their initial search for a music teacher. "She had a wonderful elementary school teacher who noticed her love of music and who encouraged me to get Gloria into a church choir," said Sylvia. "Well, nobody wanted anybody who was retarded, and at that time, she was on Ritalin, and she was hyperactive, and nobody wanted her."
Following a long string of music teachers, the Lenhoff’s encountered further resistance among teachers insistent upon teaching Gloria to read music, a task she still to this day cannot do. "[Teachers] wanted to do [teach] the classical way. You’ve got to start with the scales, and you’ve gotta know the notes, and she doesn’t know the names of the notes," said Howard. "So my wife had a college friend who was a professional opera singer who had retired and was teaching music in prison to prisoners. And my wife says, ‘She’ll teach prisoners, darn it, she’ll teach my daughter.’ At her first lesson, she was singing Mozart and Handel, and that started her music career at age 11."
Little is actually known about Williams syndrome. Discovered by a cardiologist in 1961, the disorder is caused by missing genes on the seventh chromosome and occurs in one out of every 20,000 people, regardless of ethnic group, race, or gender. The missing genes inhibit physical and mental development, and Williams people, as they are often called, look young and share similar physical and social features, sometimes described as having "pixie-like" features and a "cocktail party" personality. Williams people also have problems judging visual and spatial relationships and have difficulties with tasks such as crossing the street, and they often have problems with higher cognitive functions.
Yet the disorder leaves people with another similar trait: exceptional musical talents, frequently including perfect pitch and perfect rhythm. Howard Lenhoff, a career biologist and avid researcher of the disorder and its effects, has studied the cognitive abilities and musical talents of Williams people and has published numerous articles on the subject in both academic and consumer magazines.
"The rule is that, in order to have absolute (perfect) pitch as an adult, you have to have worked at music between the ages of three and six. After the age of six, no matter how good a musician you are, if you haven’t had musical training before then, you’ll never have perfect pitch," he said.
Yet, in one of his own personal studies, Howard found that Williams people had a much higher rate of perfect pitch than their normally developed counterparts. "The critical period, that’s what the psychologists call it, which ends at age six for the normal population remains open for life in Williams syndrome people. When the brain goes wrong and turns off the ability to do math, it also turns off that ability of that window to slam shut at age six. It gets jammed."
But their musical similarities do not end at an extraordinarily refined ear, he said. "I would say, as a generality, that virtually all people with Williams syndrome love music, and they have no fear of performing," he said. This includes his daughter.
"Put her on stage and she is in control. She knows she’s got an audience, she knows she’s good, and she doesn’t make mistakes. She’s really, really a different person.
"Other things she has peaks and valleys, more valleys than peaks, but this one peak, language and voice, is phenomenal. It’s like magic."
Typical, protective parents, Howard and Sylvia were at first apprehensive about letting Gloria display her talents for fear that the pressure of performing would be too great. However, as she had done all her life, Gloria quickly proved them wrong. For her Bat Mitzvah, Howard and Sylvia feared that the complicated songs required for the service would be too difficult for their 12-year-old daughter.
"We were like most parents. ‘Oh we can’t have it in the synagogue with everyone there. She can’t do it.’ So we had it in a synagogue chapel on a different night. And this one old man taught her the ‘Song of Songs.’ And she sang that, and it was so beautiful. To me, after that evening, I said, ‘It’s music for Gloria.’ That was my religious experience."
Since then, Gloria’s music has taken her all over the world, performing in Israel, Spain, and England, and for orchestras across the United States. It even garnered her a performance of "I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing" with Aerosmith band members at a fund-raiser for another of Howard and Gloria’s pet projects, the Berkshire Hills Music Academy for the cognitively impaired.
The performance with Aerosmith included one of the band’s drummers, bassist Tom Hamilton, and guitarist Brad Whitford who actually recruited Gloria for the fund-raiser after hearing her sing at a separate fund-raiser in Nantucket, Mass. After singing Puccini’s "Mi chiamano Mimi" from La Boheme, Brad Whitford broke down into tears and asked Gloria to perform with them at the Ritz Carlton in Boston to raise money for the music academy. At the Boston fund-raiser, Gloria helped raise $1 million. "We call that her million dollar song," said Howard.
Berkshire Hills Music Academy, for which Whitford and Gloria were raising money, was founded … in an attempt to offer other Williams children the opportunity to develop their musical talents as Gloria had. The academy, a nine-month music program that will eventually become a full-time residential community for the musical but cognitively impaired, is having its first graduating class this year.
One of the inspiring factors for founding the music academy, for Howard and Sylvia, was the seemingly morbid concern of many parents of the mentally handicapped which is: what will happen to them when we die? To make sure Gloria was provided for and taken care of after they pass, Howard and Sylvia, two years ago, relocated from their home in California to Oxford, just an hour away from Gloria’s new home at the Baddour Memorial Center in Senatobia, which, fortunately for Gloria, is known for one of its traveling musical groups called The Miracles.
Its close proximity to Oxford has allowed Gloria to continue her musical training with Gregory Rike, associate professor of voice and vocal pedagogy at the University of Mississippi, and this Saturday, Gloria will have her Oxford performing debut at a recital in Meek Hall auditorium.
In a very demanding program of five operatic arias and songs in five different languages, including Japanese and Arabic, Gloria will perform some of her favorite pieces and may even showcase her accordion-playing abilities, a talent she picked up just as easily as singing.
Working with Gloria for two years, Rike says, has offered a new perspective on musical talent. "Her abilities are pretty fascinating," said Rike. "She sings all kinds of music: opera, classical, blues, folk songs, rock, all different venues. So in that regard, she is probably far above most other students who are pigeon-holed into certain types of music.
"It’s kind of unbelievable that she has an IQ of 55, and she learns music so quickly when some of our students, our majors, struggle and struggle and struggle sometimes."
In fact, Rike says that Gloria’s talents are so innate that he really considers himself a coach rather than a music teacher. "I don’t find a lot of technical flaws with her," he said. "There are some things I’d like to fix, and we’re working on those. But she does listen well. And she responds quickly when I ask her to do things."
Saturday’s performance will be the first solo performance of Gloria’s Rike will see, and he says he’s anxious to see how she performs in front of a live audience. "She doesn’t have any problems emoting the passion of the music or the text, even though she may not have a clue what the text is about. She is very passionate about her singing."
Gloria, who loves performing, is also looking forward to showcasing her talent. "My favorite part about singing is that I have a gift from God who gave me this wonderful gift that I’ve been wanting to have," she said. "A long time ago I thought to myself that I wasn’t going to have this kind of singing gift, and I felt that I needed help so I asked God to help me to give me that talent."
In the 1920s, a Japanese violinist named Shinichi Suzuki announced to the world a new approach to musical pedagogy: that any child, regardless of age, ability, or musical background, could learn music just as he or she had learned a native language. To him, music was merely an extension of natural communication, learned and perfected by ear.
While Gloria was never associated with Suzuki or his teachings, she conveyed this method to a community of children who may never have been able to develop talent without her as an inspiration. "She is really a spokesperson through her singing for handicapped people, all of whom have things they do really well," said Howard.
One parent told Howard, after seeing a PBS documentary on Gloria, "If we’d never seen ‘Bravo Gloria,’ none of us would have had any hope for our children. And she’s given us hope."
ADDENDUM: For a "change of pace," for the encore Gloria charmed the audience by singing country favorite Patsy Cline’s "Crazy," and Elvis’ "Blue Suede Shoes." For those two pieces she accompanied herself with her own arrangements on the accordion.
