Malcolm Hollis, 25, is an actor in New York City.

Ahmani Peets, 21, runs cookie making business Ahmani’s Cookie Company and hopes to open his own store.

Both Bermudians are on the autism spectrum.

This month they are teaming up to produce Sing 4 Autism, a fundraising concert to help others with autism.

Mr Hollis is going to sing, while Mr Peets is sponsoring the event through a $10,000 grant he received last year from the Meritus Trust.

There are a range of therapies that can help people with autism such as speech therapy, behavioural therapy, medication and occupational therapy. However, these treatments can be expensive.

“Money raised by Sing 4 Autism will take that burden off of families, for a particular time,” Mr Peets’ father Anthony Peets said.

Agencies such as Tomorrow’s Voices will decide who benefits from the funds.

Mr Hollis’s parents Margie and Wendell Hollis have seen just how beneficial specialised therapy can be.

When Mr Hollis did not speak at the age of 2, an MRI revealed he had cortical dysplasia, a brain disorder associated with autism. The experts recommended intense speech therapy.

Mrs Hollis said: “They said the more speech therapy he had, the better the outcome. He went from hardly any words to hundreds of words after a few months of speech therapy. We felt it was important to keep going.”

She hoped that Sing 4 Autism demonstrated how critical it was to get services, as early as possible.

“Education for the parents is also important,” she said. “They can work on things at home that parents of neurotypical children do not have to do.”

When Mr Hollis was little, his parents also worked to build on his interests. One of them was music.

“Malcolm knew what song was playing on the radio from the first notes,” Mrs Hollis said. “He hated if you turned the car on and a song started from the middle. He always wanted to play the song from the beginning.”

When he was 8, she signed her son up for trombone lessons. He was not into sports and she wanted to find something for him to do.

“He was so little and the trombone was so big,” Mrs Hollis remembered, laughing. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He picked up the instrument quickly but it was the sound of voice lessons next door that intrigued him.

“We met the voice teacher, Granville Oldham, in the hall,” Mrs Hollis said.

Within six months, Mr Hollis had dropped the trombone and was in Mr Oldham’s class instead.

Mr Oldham discovered Mr Hollis had perfect pitch – the ability to identify or recreate a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. Only one in 10,000 people are thought to have the gift.

“In addition to learning music, Mr Oldham taught Malcolm what the notes were,” Mrs Hollis said. “He taught him how to use his perfect pitch. As a result of that Malcolm did a lot of music theory, and got fairly high up in it.”

He developed a passion not just for music, but also performance. He sang at the Bermuda premiere of Michael Jackson’s This Is It in 2009 and twice in the Bermuda Festival.

After finishing high school in the United States, he was accepted into the summer programme at the New York Conservatory for the Performing Arts. Halfway through the season they asked him to apply to the school itself, which had just launched a two-year musical theatre programme.

Mr Hollis and his mother have dual citizenship. They were living in New York while he completed the conservatory’s programme when the Covid-19 pandemic erupted.

They returned to the island just before the world shut down and Mr Hollis graduated online.

“During that time, he definitely felt very stuck in Bermuda,” Mrs Hollis said. “He did a bunch of editing while he was here because he loves to put music and movies together. He wanted to go back to New York but there was no point since the theatre world had not yet reopened.“

The conservatory sent him several auditions to do online, including one for a musical called How To Dance in Ohio.

“It was written based on a documentary, about a bunch of high schoolchildren in Ohio, who are all neurodivergent,” Mrs Hollis said. “The musical came to Broadway, which is humongous.”

Mrs Hollis told her son he could go back to New York if he found a job. He surprised her by finding one at a place called the Museum of Broadway, an interactive and experiential museum that celebrates Broadway’s history. In October 2022, he and his mother moved back to New York City.

With the help of a friend, they found a theatrical agent.

“The next thing you know he had a message from his agent suggesting he audition for How to Dance in Ohio again,” Mrs Hollis said. “They wanted him to take a swing at one of the two leads. He got a call back, which was huge. However, he did not get it in the end.”

Lana Young, another Bermudian actor working in New York, advised Mr Hollis to do an audition and then just put it out of his mind.

“You have to virtually forget about it,” Mrs Hollis said.

He did get into the Epic Players, an inclusive theatre company of neurotypical and neurodiverse directors, designers, educators, and technicians. They create performances for the benefit of artist and attendee alike.

• Sing 4 Autism will be held on March 24 at 6pm at Bermuda Institute of Seventh-Day Adventists. Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and $10 for children, 12 and under, available atwww.gpass.bm