Associate Organist, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square 

(Washington, DC)

Lyn H. Loewi is Associate Organist at St. John’s Church, Lafayette Square, in Washington, DC. She has been a church musician, teacher, and recitalist for forty years. Her interest in women composers began in 1983 with a DMA dissertation on women composers for the organ. She is a member of the AGO Task Force for Gender Equity, President of the Women's Sacred Music Project, and a contributor to the database of sacred choral music by women, A Great Host of Composers. Her leading role in creating our 2023 Resounding Voices hymnal was born of a desire to honor the founders of our 2003 hymnal Voices Found. She is glad that the project

has focused our understanding of what women (those who identify as women) bring to sacred song: the deconstruction of an exclusively White male view of God and a more complete vision of The Holy One. Loewi has held positions at St. John's Cathedral in Denver, Colorado, St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and First Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon, and Webster Groves Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri. She has taught at Portland State University and

the University of Minnesota and played recitals at Notre Dame in Paris, in Japan, and in Germany.

Cantor, Congregation Rodeph Sholom

Cantor Shayna De Lowe (she/her) has dedicated her career to Congregation Rodeph Sholom, beginning her role as cantor there directly after being ordained from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s School of Sacred Music in 2007. Growing up in a very small, tight-knit Jewish community in the Midwest, Shayna now proudly serves on the Board of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life. 

She is a graduate of the Clergy Leadership Program through the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a program that fueled Shayna’s search for different avenues of spiritual connection through music. Shayna helped develop a special needs B’nai Mitzvah program which opens Jewish tradition to families with all kinds of needs. She created an American Sign Language choir, combining ASL and singing to offer prayer in a medium accessible to those in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.

Called to the cantorate by the desire to use music to guide people as they navigate their own spiritual path, Cantor De Lowe uses her voice to bring people closer to one another and to their Judaism.

Professor Emerita at Union Theological Seminary

I am a professor, a musician, an author, a lecturer. I enjoy being with congregations, Christian, Jewish and no particular denomination to lead evaluation and experimentation. I ask what we can we do together in our worship to practice living with respect, joy, justice and love. I depend on active collaboration with artists and with members of the congregations.

Some examples: For an interfaith city-wide service at Central Synagogue and Union Theological Seminary we invited composers and dancers to lead us with sound and movement realities of AIDs. We felt its pain, isolation and fear. Years later, we asked Charivari to lead worship with world leaders who gathered to talk to each other climate justice. We wanted to feel a commitment in our bodies.

As a professor of worship and the arts. I began teaching at Union Seminary in 1979 with the task of engaging the community to design worship four days every week. We asked ourselves how do we connect what we study in our courses with what we do in worship. Planning required study, experimentation and evaluation.

At the same time, a friend and I, Roman Catholic women, started a women's liturgy group. Still we meet every month. Through music, art, movements and words, we invite each other to ways of worshipping that meet our needs as women. It is different and wonderful every time we gather. God is more and we are more.