This prolific Valley Stream opera duo will mark 25 years of their music school with August concert

He is a prolific opera composer and musical director. She is a formidable soprano and actress. For the past 22 years, husband and wife Leonard Lehrman and Helene Williams, an inseparable musical duo, have combined their talents in hundreds of shared performances and musical collaborations worldwide.

Their devotion to classical music — and the sublime, opulent art of opera in particular — has been the bonding agent for their marriage. Sharing their accumulated years of music knowledge and experience with students in their charming home-turned-music school on Court Street has been a 25-year passion project. And they show no signs of stopping.

To celebrate, as per the couple’s custom, they will give a free invitation concert at 33 Court St. on Aug. 3 at 3 p.m. The concert, led by Lehrman and Williams, will also include violinist Daniel Hyman, pianist Joseph Martin, and singers Perri Sussman, Caryn Hartglass, Thomas Smith and Bennett Pologe. The audience will be treated to a menu of the couple’s handpicked favorite 21 songs, featuring the works of Joel Mandelbaum, Richard Straus, Antony Arensky, and Lehrman himself.

“This is going to be our 705th concert, and it’s a special anniversary concert,” said Lehrman. “We’ve done mostly performing but we always do teaching,”

Between their various excursions abroad, concert tours, and creative projects, they have consistently found time to mentor a select group of students over the years. The school, known as Court Street Music, remains as central to their lives as it has since its inception in 1999. The pair watched over the musical development of musicians young and old, for NYSSMA coaching, vocal coaching, and music theory and composition study. Some have been with them for years.

“We’ve had students from the ages of 7 to 86,” said Lehrman who aims to show each student not just how to play music with technical precision but how
to perform it beautifully. There’s a difference.

“Playing beautifully means feeling the emotion that is involved. It means doing the phrases in such a way that not every note is equal to every other note, but every note has a direction, an arc, and a feeling of movement,” he said.

In helping vocalists bring a piece of music to life, Helene tries to coach them to speak as they sing. “Not using a speech voice but making the flow of the words sound like you’re speaking,” said Helene. “Most of the time a good composer will write the intonation and stress pattern set in the music. If you don’t make it sensible in speech, then it’s very bland. Then you add emotion to it.”

A profound mistake that performers and composers make, even those who are peerless in their musical ability, is shutting themselves off from others and failing to take an interest in the music of others, argued Lehrman.

“If you’re not interested in listening to other people’s music, why should they be interested in listening to yours?” he said arguing that connection is at the heart of great music. “Your music can be great and have its intrinsic value, but in the real world, people care about people who care about them. We have to take care of and about one another. That’s what a good life is all about.”

Leonard Lehrman will also be hosting his 75th birthday concert on Tuesday, August 20 at 7 p.m. at the Hewlett-Woodmere Library.

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