Lori Singer (born November 6, 1957) is an American actress and musician. The daughter of conductor Jacques Singer, she was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and raised in Portland, Oregon, where her father served as the lead conductor of the Oregon Symphony from 1962 to 1972. Singer was a musical prodigy, making her debut as a cellist with the Oregon Symphony at thirteen, and was subsequently accepted to the Juilliard School, where she became the institution's youngest graduate.
Singer was born November 6, 1957[2] in Corpus Christi, Texas, to Jacques Singer, a Polish-born conductor and protégé of Leopold Stokowski, and Leslie (née Wright), a concert pianist.[3] She has a fraternal twin brother, Gregory, a violinist; and two older brothers: actor Marc, and Claude.[2][3] At the time of her birth, Singer's father was working as the conductor of the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra.
Singer is of Jewish descent.[4]
When Singer was four years old, she relocated with her family to Portland, Oregon, where her father served as lead conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1972.[5] Singer spent her formative years in Portland, and made her debut as soloist at the age of thirteen with the Oregon Symphony.[5] She attended Lincoln High School in Portland.[6] In the summer of 1971, Singer and brother Gregory attended a summer music camp in New York led by cellist Yo-Yo Ma.[6]
Singer was accepted into the Juilliard School at age fourteen,[3] where she became the youngest graduate of the institution.[2] After graduating from Juilliard, Singer performed with the Western Washington University Symphony Orchestra.
After completing her studies at Juilliard, Singer signed with Elite Modeling Agency.[2] She continued to perform as a concert soloist, and in 1980 won the Bergen Philharmonic Competition.[2] She subsequently shifted her focus to acting, inspired by her brother, Marc.[1] Commenting on her decision to pursue a career as an actress, she said: "In a world where such terrible things are happening, it's just so fantastic to become someone else."[1] In 1982, Singer was cast as Julie Miller, a shy high school student, in the television series Fame, and appeared in the first two seasons.[2] The role of Miller, a teenage dancer and cellist, was written specifically for Singer's talents. In 1983, she and a number of other cast members—under the group name the Kids from "Fame"—performed a live concert at Royal Albert Hall, which was recorded and released as a live album.[7]
In 1997, Singer acted in the fourth episode of the series Inspired by Bach, where she also played the cello with Yo-Yo Ma, whose summer music camp she had attended in 1971.
In 2013, Singer executive produced with Sheila Nevins, HBO, and Jessica Kingdon the documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, directed by Alex Gibney. In 2012 the film won the Grierson Award at the London Film Festival and it also won the Chicago International Film Festival's award. In 2013, the film won the Best Feature Documentary category in the Irish Film and Television Awards. In the United States, the film was nominated for five prime-time Emmy awards; it won three: Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film Making, Outstanding Writing, and Best Editor. The film was short-listed for the Academy Awards in 2013 and was nominated for a Writers Guild Award. In 2014 the documentary was awarded a Peabody Award. In 2017 she narrated the documentary God Knows Where I Am which won 17 film festivals, an Emmy and streamed on Netflix in 2019. She also performed "Linda's Song" with Paul Cantelone for the soundtrack of the film.
^"Celebrities: Jake Gyllenhaal". Jewish United Fund. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016. Retrieved September 30, 2020. The Gyllenhaal brother-and-sister acting team reminds of another sibling pair of Jewish actors, Marc and Lori Singer.
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