…[Charlene] sings opera in four languages and a five-octave range.
“It’s an exceptional talent,” says Harry Seng, director of creative therapy at J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center, a state center for people with developmental disabilities where Sawyer accompanies music-therapy sessions on piano for participants.
Because of her disability, Sawyer will probably never sing in a great performance hall. But if she didn’t have autism, she likely wouldn’t have cultivated her voice to such a degree in the first place. Many high-functioning autistics such as herself nurse obsessions, and Sawyer’s obsession is music.
…“It actually makes me feel free, open and free,” Charlene Sawyer says as she prepares for the open-mic performance. She forces herself to lock eyes with a stranger as she talks about her music.
“It took me a while to let my emotions open up, because I was closed up for such a long time.”
Sawyer, 34, sings whenever she gets the chance, at churches, conferences, retirement homes, anywhere she’s invited. She takes voice lessons and practices up to four hours a day, training her rich mezzo-soprano to negotiate the intricacies of dramatic operatic roles.
…She started singing around the house at age 5 and taking piano lessons and performing with school choirs at 12. At 14, she started taking voice lessons from a woman who recognized her talent and offered to train her for free.
…Instead of the socializing she might have enjoyed as a young teenager, she immersed herself in her budding gift, learning pieces in Italian, Latin, German and French.
…Her high school chorus teacher referred the family to the Riddle center, which connected her with a local group home in 1991. There, staff helped her find a voice instructor and performance venues.
“She just blossomed,” [her mother] says.
Fredda Monroe, director of The Enola Group, which operates Sawyer’s group home and offers skill development through an arts program called Studio XI, says she wants to market Sawyer to perform at weddings and to perhaps cut a CD of her singing…