As a lifelong musician and music teacher, Lavenna’s commitment to music and positive development of students in music gives her a strong interest in the mission of the Mid-America Performing Arts Alliance (MAPAA). She has recently retired from 25 years of teaching with Ottawa Suzuki Strings in Ottawa, Kansas, where summer programs involved uniting students with world-class classical musicians, giving them opportunities to listen to, learn from, and perform for them and with them, both as soloists and in small ensembles.

Lavenna has a bachelor’s degree in music education from Westmar College located in LeMars, Iowa. She has played in the Sioux City Symphony, as well as orchestras in Interlochen, Michigan, Tri-Cities in the state of Washington, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and orchestras in Wichita, Ottawa, and Lawrence, Kansas.  She has done graduate work at Kansas State University, the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania and Friends University in Wichita, KS. For most of her adult life she has taught elementary and junior high vocal, band, and orchestra in public schools; while also giving private lessons in viola, violin, and piano. In addition, she has also worked with both children and adult choirs, as well as bell choirs in the churches she has attended. In 1995, she began her Suzuki training and teaching, which she now uses to help train her two grandchildren in Lawrence, KS with their violin and cello studies. She currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her husband, who is a retired nuclear engineer that enjoys playing his baritone in a community band.