Rare condition gives woman low IQ, perfect pitch

By Katheran Wasson

State-Journal (Frankfort, KY)

May 12, 2009

Gloria Lenhoff can’t read music, but the 54-year-old Stewart Home School resident has spent her life learning more than 2,000 songs by ear.

Lenhoff has Williams Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that gave her both an IQ of 55 and astonishing musical talent. 

She has perfect pitch and can sing in 30 languages. She can hear a song and memorize it in minutes – she says “it’s easy.”

“Williams Syndrome people can’t help who they are, but they can do anything,” she said. “And I can do anything, because I want to keep my mind to it, and I don’t want to give anything up for the world.”

Lenhoff started singing at age 11, when her father, Howard Lenhoff, professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of California, recognized her preternatural abilities. Howard Lenhoff was a musician himself – a guitar player.

“My dad used to have students come to the house, and he would have them put songs on a tape,” Lenhoff said. 

The students would sing songs one note at a time, she said, pausing between notes so she could repeat it. At the end of the tape, they would record the entire song. Lenhoff says it took her five to 10 minutes to learn a song. 

Now she practices up to three hours each day and takes voice lessons once a week from Dr. Shawn-Allyce White, a Lexington-based professional singer. 

White teaches Lenhoff songs note by note, either sung or played on the piano, and instructs her in things that don’t come as naturally, like breathing. If the song is in a different language, they often go over the language first, White said.

Lenhoff calls her teacher every Tuesday night to remind her of their Wednesday appointment, White said.

“For some reason with Gloria, when it comes to music, her brain functions in a way that is mind-boggling to me,” she said. “I can teach a piece to her in one lesson, and she’s got perfect pitch. It’s a joy to work with her.”

White studied music at Syracuse University and Yale, before earning her doctorate at the University of Kentucky. She also worked as an assistant to Dr. Carl Smith, Kentucky State University’s longtime choral director.

“Even a classically-trained opera singer does not sing in 29 languages,” she said. “They just don’t.”

Lenhoff sings operas, show tunes, gospel, spirituals – even Hawaiian music.

“You name it, mostly anything,” she said.

She has sung with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra and the Memphis Opera. She performed 13 concerts in one week in Israel, and she has sung in Spain and across the U.S.

In 2010 she will go to France to participate in a Williams Syndrome conference, speaking about her condition and singing. In preparation, she is learning conversational French from Frankfort High School teacher Jocelyne Waddle.

“Traveling and performing means you’re showing someone else what you can do for them,” Lenhoff said. 

“It’s just like you’re singing a song, and you’re thanking God for what he’s done. Like, he’s given you all these gifs and all these things that you’ve been wanting to have, and you haven’t had them.”

Lenhoff also plays the accordion, electric keyboard and piano. She spends two to three hours a day practicing accordion in her music room at Stewart Home School.

“I like feeling the black buttons and feeling around with the chords and making different kinds of music with it,” she said last week, moments before catapulting into a “good, fast polka” in the senior activity center on campus.

Brenda Spencer, Lenhoff’s adviser at Stewart Home School, said the facility has about six residents with Williams Syndrome.

 “I don’t know any of them that doesn’t have some kind of music talent,” she said. “It’s at different levels, but they’re all very, very interested.”

Williams Syndrome makes it tough for Lenhoff to do some things – she has a hard time moving her arm, for one. Others have trouble with their legs, she said, and some have heart problems.

About one in 7,500 babies are born with Williams Syndrome, missing 26 genes on the seventh chromosome. The deletion causes mental disabilities, small, “pixie” facial features, a gregarious personality, and often a love of music.

But Lenhoff is a self-proclaimed “busy person.” In addition to her study of music, she takes a daily computer class and has learned to type 30 words a minute. She spends an hour on the treadmill every day.

“I have faith in myself,” she said. “Sometimes, when I’m not practicing, I just sit in my room and do some reading and maybe take a piece of paper and a pencil and write things down, do a little meditation or something.”

Lenhoff was injured in a serious car accident 17 years ago. She broke her arm and leg and spent weeks in the hospital.

“I felt like I was never going to make it through, and I had to fight, I had to fight so hard to tell God to get me back on my feet again so I could do all these things,” she said.

 “I recovered, and I’m doing everything.”

She said she hopes to schedule more performances in the future, either locally or abroad.

“Sometimes I think to myself, ‘I’ve got to keep using my gifts. If I don’t keep using my gifts, I won’t be able to do all these things that I want to do,’” she said.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have those gifts and challenges.”