Meet LANA's New Board Members
/At the 2016 Summer Lyre Conference in Hadley, Massachusetts, during the All General Meeting of the Lyre Association of North America (LANA), we thanked our outgoing board members, Catherine Decker, Rosamond Hughes and Suzanne Mays, for their years of service. We then welcomed our three newly elected board members, Julia Elliot, Wendy Polich, and Seeya Zheng. Here, we would like to introduce them:
Julia Elliott has been involved with the musical life at the Waldorf School her children attended in Beverly, MA, for nearly twenty years. She has worked as the eurythmy pianist and instrumental accompanist and currently teaches chorus to the upper grades. She never encountered the lyre, however, until attending the Resonare course in Philmont, NY, four years ago. After hearing the tone of the lyre, her understanding of how we experience music deepened dramatically. She now tries to integrate that experience into her work with student singers and instrumentalists, and is grateful for the ways in which the lyre has shaped her capacity for listening. She lives on Boston’s North Shore with her husband and three children.
Wendy Polich fell in love with the sound of the lyre in 2013 while attending a course along with LANA Board member Debbie Barford. Debbie brought her lyre and every time she played, Wendy was bathed and entranced by the tones. Debbie recognized a sister lyrist soul and suggested she rent a lyre from LANA. Wendy now owns a Derscheid solo lyre, lovingly restored by lyre builder Alan Thewless. While a Camphill coworker, she was fortunate to play weekly with the members of the S.E. Pennsylvania Lyre Ensemble whom she first met, along with many other wonderful lyrists, lyre builders, and teachers, at the International Lyre Conference held in Detroit, August 2015. She is currently attending Resonare, Foundation Course in Music out of Anthroposophy. Wendy now lives in Littleton, Colorado.
Seeya Zheng studied International Business and had worked as a Social Compliance specialist in China. She first heard a small group of lyrists playing while traveling in New Zealand and longed to learn about this angelic instrument. Her path in the business world led to a path of spiritual striving when she came to the U.S. to study Social Therapy. She is now running an elder care house with a team of young international volunteers, and managing a weaving shop with 12 adults with special needs in Camphill Village Copake. Under the teaching of Channa Seidenberg, she was encouraged to explore lyre playing as a way of staying connected with her late father. She plays a Derscheid soprano lyre in the lyre group of Copake, and a Gartner alto lyre for the Color and Light therapy.