34-year-old Charlene Sawyer has a “rich and dark mezzo soprano voice,” today’s Charlotte Observer notes. Sawyer was not diagnosed with autism until she was 17 years old. She started piano lessons and performing with school choirs at the age of 12, and has been taking voice lessons since she was 14. And

Around this time, she says, her peers made fun of her because they knew she took special education classes. Instead of the socializing she might have enjoyed as a young teen-ager, she immersed herself in her budding gift, learning pieces in Italian, Latin, German and French.

Sawyer has written an outline of her autobiography and now lives in a group home run by the Enola Group, whose director, Fredda Monroe, “says she wants to market Charlene to perform at weddings and to perhaps cut a CD of her singing.”

Heidi Thompson, a friend of Charlene’s who accompanies her to see opera performances in Charlotte and works with her at Studio XI, says Charlene told her she wants to “tell the story of what it’s like to be an artist with a disability.”

“Most autistic people can’t feel or express emotion,” Charlene says. “I do.”

It’s not stated clearly in the Charlotte Observer article: Is it through her singing, through music, that Sawyer is able to “feel” and “express emotion”—usic certainly seems to be such a medium for my son Charlie, from the days when him singing “Frere Jacques” signified that he was upset.

(No, he wasn’t singing that song tonight!)

9-year-old David Militello, who has Asperger Sydnrome, has sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” at NBA games and before a Martin Luther King, Jr., rally in Atlanta; he also sang “Ben” on America’s Got Talent. On Sunday, 18-year-old Jessica Summers—who has autism and who, doctors said, would never speak—sang the national anthem to open the Cal Ripken Southwest Regional Championship in Maumelle, Arkansas. Go here to see, and hear.

19-year-old Erik Weber has graduated from Grossmont College with an associate’s degree and plans to attend Point Loma Nazarene University to get his bachelor’s degree, today’s Sign On San Diego reports. Weber was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 years old and was not really verbal until he was 8. His mother, Sandy Weber, attended college classes with him:

Erik and Sandy, 60, started with physical-education classes – ballroom dance, weight training, tai chi – before moving on to academics. Sometimes she would be in the same room as Erik; sometimes she would be in another part of the building taking her own class. Sandy says she wanted to make him feel comfortable because change can be unnerving for autistic people.

“It’s about creating a comfort zone and transitioning to a different environment,” she said.

Soon it became apparent Erik could handle classes on his own, with the help of large-print and audio books.

Congrats to Erik and his mother, and to 9-year-old David Militello, who recently sang “Ben” by the Jackson Five on America’s Got Talent.

Two talents to shout and sing about.

The countdown has begun: My son Charlie is in his last two months of being ten years old. A tall boy with big feet and able to reach an octave on the piano merely by opening his hand wide, and not really able to read.

When he was three, we started to teach Charlie the alphabet. He had quickly learned the numbers from 1-10 and we thought that he would pick up the letters with equal ease and speed—but after a few letters, confusion set in. Too many of the letters had an “e” sound (b, c, d, e, g, p, v) or looked alike (b, d, p, q; i, l, t). We kept at it; we had alphabet cards, blocks, puzzles of various textures, the computer. We tried to teach Charlie to memorize some sight words in the thought that he might be better able to identify the letters when he saw a few together and could learn to distinguish them. We did Edmark, Language for Learning, Headsprout, a Lovaas reading program, Laureate computer games, and all manner of reading curriula, some on the computer and plenty not. We tried prism lenses and special reading stands that held the book at a slant. We read to Charlie (he still gets up after a page or two).

We still keep at it—Charlie can identify some sights words, but not consistently, and not if I write them out by hand or point them out in a book.

I wrote “not really able to read” because there is one sort of “text,” one sort of language, that Charlie can read and that is music. I’ve detailed something of how Charlie learned to read music—notes on the treble and bass clefs—here. His piano teacher (who is currently taking a hiatus; he is missed!) velcroed the letter names for the notes on the keys (white ones only first) and Charlie first “read” music by matching letters on the keys to letters on the notes in his music book. His teacher slowly removed each velcro letter from the keys and also the letters names on the notes in the book.

Charlie has yet to learn the different time values of notes (halfs, quarters, etc.), rests, time signatures, repeats, and the like; he is learning the concept of a sharp. He still only plays out of the book that his teacher made just for him and he needs someone else to stand by when he practices (my mom helped him do this today). But it’s clear that Charlie’s eyes are moving across the page as his fingers strike a sequence of keys. “And what else do you call reading?” as Jim has said.

We’ve thought that perhaps Charlie has been able to learn to read music much more quickly and readily than words because reading music can offer immediate feedback in the form of the sounds and songs that Charlie play. Charlie still often has to pause and think before speaking so (I suspect) trying to read a word is a multi-step process of identifying letters, remembering what happens when they are all in a group, thinking of a word, thinking of how to say that word and what the word means and (somewhere along the way) saying the word. And maybe losing track of the original task of reading the word at that point.

There’s something about music that can’t be captured in words or perhaps even turned into something you can see as notes or symbols written on the page. If we were just teaching Charlie to read music without simultaneously teaching him to play the piano, I suspect it would be much harder—more abstracted?—for him. I was reminded of this when I found myself in an extensive dialogue with two colleagues today about a recital for a student who is a performing arts major. This is a relatively new major at my school and, while I can play piano and viola and once upon a time did my share of performing in youth orchestras and piano recitals, I simply do not know much of the criteria for putting together, let alone judging, an undergraduate vocal performance (the student in question sings and very well—Charlie has been known to sit rapt when hearing her). It would not be enough for this student to talk about the paper that she had written; her performance itself—her singing and acting—is the main “content” of her project.

As the student’s advisor explained over how her performance is essential to her showing her work, I thought of Charlie at the piano and now the cello. I thought of how he has been reaching for the bow and leaning his left cheek and chin into the wood, the better, perhaps, to feel the sounds he and the instrument make. I thought of how it is not really possible to capture that sound—rather squawky and jerkily smooth—in words, but how that sound clearly says something to Charlie.

When a few times this afternoon words had not come to him quickly to him, the student’s advisor had said “music brain, just a moment” and his words came back to me when I heard Charlie singing, or maybe saying?—a refrain from a Thelonious Monk piece tonight in the shower; when I heard him thinking, in music.

8-year-old David Militello has sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” at NBA games and also before a Martin Luther King, Jr., rally in Atlanta last well (here’s a video). David has Asperger Syndrome and music—singing, humming—help to “unstick” his mind:

At first, his mother says he seemed perfectly normal, even said a few words, until about age 2. “He became non-verbal. And then the humming started.”The humming, for 2 years, constant humming, was followed by notes, and lines and eventually entire songs. Today, he knows hundreds by heart.

And although his mind still locks-up with autism, David is convinced he knows the key. “For me, its like being stuck in certain phases. [But I get unstuck] when i sing.”

My son Charlie hums a lot and sings bits of songs (”A Love Supreme” has been a favorite of late). His snatches of melodies and rhythms warbled over and over are the soundtrack around here (and—thinking back to the days when Charlie said nothing at all—hearing his voice means I know where he is) Charlie does not talk as much as David but singing and humming seem to have a similar “unsticking” effect on Charlie. I suspect he often has a song playing his mind (come to think of it, I do, too, and sometimes Charlie’s own).