Executive Director - Lynnelle Ediger Kordzaia

Founder and Director of GreenSpring International Academy of Music, Lynnelle Ediger-Kordzaia is a nationally recognized as a visionary arts innovator and music educator.  She has taught harp, voice, and piano, and directed harp ensembles and children's choirs for more than 25 years. In 1999, she founded the American Youth Harp Ensemble, which continues to captivate audiences around the world as America’s premier youth harp ensemble.  The Virginia Choristers were established in 2007 and gained attention as an exceptionally talented group of young singers. In 2010, Chamber Music was added as a summer program option, and in just a few years it evolved into a year-long program, culminating in the formation of a Chamber Orchestra in 2017.

Mrs. Ediger-Kordzaia holds an undergraduate degree in Harp Performance and a graduate degree in Music Education from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where she was a student of the world-renowned harpist and teacher, Alice Chalifoux.  In addition, she studied voice at Oberlin and at the graduate level at Akron University School of Music. She also holds a Masters degree in Arts Administration from Goucher College and a Dalcroze certificate from the Juilliard School. As a harpist, she was praised for her “beautiful tone” as well as “passionate playing and brilliant technique.”

Mrs. Ediger-Kordzaia has been an invited presenter and performer at the World Harp Conference, the American Harp Society National Conferences, the International Folk Harp Conference and the International Harp Therapy Conferences. She is a recipient of the Governor’s Citation for Excellence in the Arts and has twice been named a “Top Forty Under Forty” by arts and business publications in Virginia. She was honored with the American Alliance for Performing Arts Educators 5th Annual Del Keiffner Award for Outstanding Arts Educator at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the Teresa Pollak prize for “Excellence in the Arts” from Richmond Magazine, and was the recipient of the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award in Music Education from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She was a finalist for the 2016 Grammy Teacher of the Year award and received the VASTA 2016 Outstanding String Educator award for Virginia, and the 2017 YMCA Outstanding Woman of the Year Award in the Arts.