by Nicole Falco
In the 15 years since love first struck its chord in their hearts, Williams and Lehrman have performed almost 400 concerts before audiences worldwide from the Peninsula Public Library in Lawrence to the Center for Contemporary Music in Germany and the Theodore Herzl Club in Australia. Over time their love grew like a crescendo in one of Lehrman's musical compositions.
On July 14, the Valley Stream duet may, perhaps, give their best performance to date when they exchange wedding vows at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan before an audience of family and friends.
In addition to vows, the bride and groom will exchange love songs. Williams will sing, "Where Do I Belong?" the first composition of Lehrman's that she ever performed and it is also the composition that inspired her love for Lehrman. The song is from "E.G.: A Musical Portrait of Emma Goldman."
"In a way he started proposing to me with his music 15 years ago," Williams said.
Music definitely played a part in the couple's engagement following a long courtship. Dating since 1987 and living together since 1997, the idea to wed started "rumbling around" last August after the couple spent six months auditioning performers and rehearsing for the world premiere of "Sacco & Vanzetti," an opera based on the trial, execution and eventual pardon of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for the Braintree, MA, payroll robbery and murders. The opera was one of the late composer Marc Blitzstein's unfinished works, which Lehrman completed. The opera was performed in Connecticut's White Barn Theatre.
"I felt very much one with Leonard in those circumstances," Williams said.
Lehrman said, "We [created] our own [opera] company [for the performance] and in a way we became a company."
