The Lyre Association of North America would like to extend summer greetings to all of our lyre friends worldwide. Like all of you, we in the United States have felt the strong impact of the pandemic in our midst and have had to adjust our planned summer lyre gatherings accordingly. We are very sad to have to postpone our anticipated July conference with master teacher Christian Giersch. However, we did not wish to cancel our conference all together, even though we realized that a general gathering of any kind was not going to be possible due to the circumstances in which we find ourselves at this unprecedented time.

After much discussion and consideration, LANA has made the decision to hold a decentralized lyre conference this year. We have decided to spread out our conference geographically and to create a LANA-sponsored International Lyre Day with everyone participating from his or her own local area. We are proposing to hold this event during our originally scheduled conference week on Monday, July 20th, which happens to be the birthday of our dear friend and colleague Channa Seidenberg, who crossed the Threshold of death on March 14th.

We would like to invite any and all lyrists throughout the world to join us for this re-birthed LANA Lyre Conference for 2020!

Dear LANA members and friends of the lyre,

We are excited to share with each of you our 2019-2020 Annual Report of the Lyre Association of North America. You will hear the voices of almost all of our Board members in the various committee and initiative reports, and we have been amazed ourselves to realize through this report the diverse programs and activities that have characterized this last year for our Association! We are also very pleased to be able to present this report to you in a brand new flexible format that should make the reading interesting and enjoyable for everyone.

Of special note is that we have dedicated this Annual Report to our dear colleague and friend, Channa Seidenberg who crossed the Threshold as we were beginning work on this project. We wished to take advantage of the opportunity this publication has provided for us to share with you a description of Channa's life and important role she played in the development of our lyre work in North America. Please enjoy this once-a-year special issue of our Lyre Notes!

Dear Lyre players around the world,

We arranged O'Carolan’s “Miss McDermott” and would like to share our work during this unusual time with you to show our solidarity for the Lyre Mantle of Sound Around the Earth.

Enjoy playing this Free Download .... With our warmest wishes. (Easier for 2 Lyres!)

from Celia Unsworth (Arranger) and Rebecca Dietzel, Germany

This is how it is for me just now.

Right now – sheltering-in-place -
living in the not knowing

I feel myself in ferment.

Swirling around me, questions.
What is really happening right now?
What is really being asked of us?
What are we preparing for?

We’ve added a new page to our website: “PDF Downloads”! Check it out….

This Bach Prelude is for distribution for the Lyre Mantle Project. With warm wishes to all of you.

by Thomas Pedroli

Once upon a time there was a country with very happy people. The people had plenty of work, and still, they found enough time to care about each other, to sit still for a while and do nothing, or to play with their children. This started to change after a trader came into the country.

Association, We would very much appreciate hearing by May 31st from anyone who has an interest in attending LANA's conference with Christian Giersch, July 20-24, 2020, in Ghent, NY. “Giving Form to the Inaudible through Listening.”

Please respond to the LANA Conference Survey to help us plan for Lyre 2020 in Ghent, NY.

It has been almost six weeks since we started our lyre mantle project, with a vision of having the lyre sound around the globe each day. Let us continue with our playing, having the intention to use the blessed tones of the lyre to support the health and happiness of people throughout our world toward a time of healing, peace, and universally shared prosperity.

Don’t miss our special sales page at http://lyreassociation.org/on-sale!

This is a great time of year to grab a copy of Anna Cooper’s new book, Some Songs of the Hebrides, and call your lyre friends together to make music. A collection of seven beautiful Hebridean melodies, these settings musically evoke vibrant images of wind, water and wildness.

Christian Giersch will be traveling from Germany to North America to work with members and friends of the Lyre Association of North America on the experience of the lyre as a pathway to the space between the tones.

Monday–Friday, July 20–24, 2020 Hawthorne Valley School, Ghent, NY

Pre-registration Now Open! A $100 deposit secures your place at the conference and helps us plan.

Monday, July 20 – Friday, July 24, 2020

Hawthorne Valley School, Ghent, New York

Giving Form to the Inaudible: The Lyre as a Pathway to the Space between the Tones

For updates, go to our Conference page here

Click here for the link to our latest newsletter, Lyre Notes 2019, with Season’s Greetings from President Nancy Carpenter for the LANA Board. In addition, many of the articles are also posted as individual blog posts shown below. Just scroll down and browse!

Many of you will recall reading in our Fall Lyre Notes about the new LANA initiative we are calling The Lyre Connection, whose primary purpose will be to connect beginning lyrists with more experienced players who could serve as informal mentors. Although such an arrangement could definitely be made online, we realized that if we had some idea where our various members were located geographically, it could allow certain of our members to be able to connect physically. With this idea in mind, we would like to share with you the regional breakdown of our membership as it is presently constituted.

The Rocky Mountain Lyre Choir is a handful of lyre players on both sides of the Continental Divide wanting to grow our lyre community. Our First Annual Rocky Mountain Lyre Spa Gathering will be held in the beautiful mountain town of Carbondale, CO.

By Akiko Suesada, Triform Camphill Community, Hudson, NY

I am not fluent in speaking or writing in English, but I thought for the first time maybe it would be good to write whatever I can so that more people would know that there is a small activity happening in Triform as a part of the larger movement of the lyre. Triform itself has had many people who have brought this impulse throughout its 40-year biography.

By Saeko Cohn, Nyack, NY

A year ago, Kerry Lee gave me an article that Christof-Andreas Lindenberg wrote in 1986, titled “The Advent Garden and the Lyre.” After having played at two Advent Gardens this year, I revisited this article and am grateful to be part of this history and the therapeutic impulse that lies behind the simultaneous creation of Advent Garden and the modern lyre in 1926.

By Sheila Johns, Cuenca, Ecuador

On Sunday, December 1st, the Uriel Center for Human Renewal through the Arts and Education in Cuenca, Ecuador sponsored our fifth annual Advent Garden. The Uriel Center is serving as a center for anthroposophic activity here in Cuenca and has most recently become home for a budding local Waldorf early childhood program.

By Anna Cooper, Brittany, France

Hi LANA members! I would like to let you know that there is an inspirational music publishing company, run by Andrew Dyer, where music is printed at Camphill Botton Village in the North Yorks Moors, UK.