Lee Ann Dransfield Announces Retirement After 22 Years of Service at Shenandoah

Auxiliary Adjunct Assistant Professor of Piano Lee Ann Dransfield, M.M., has announced her retirement from Shenandoah Conservatory at the end of the 2019/20 academic year. Dransfield began working at Shenandoah in 1998 and will retire after more than 20 years of dedicated service to its artistic and educational community. She is especially celebrated for her contributions to the class piano curriculum.

Lee Ann Dransfield has nurtured the piano skills of countless Shenandoah Conservatory students over the past 22 years. Her expertise, creativity and grace will be missed greatly.

– Coordinator of Conservatory Teaching and Graduate Assistantships and Associate Professor of Piano Karen Walker, D.M.A.

She moved to Winchester in 1996 with her husband, Lorne Bair, when she began teaching for Shenandoah Conservatory Arts Academy (SCAA) and founded, with her husband, The Satisfied Mind, an antiquarian book shop and coffeehouse on Winchester’s Old Town Walking Mall.

Dransfield studied music therapy at Ohio University as an undergraduate and is registered and certified as a music therapist. She worked in adolescent psychiatry for several years in New Orleans, Louisiana, before returning to school at the University of Oregon for a Master of Music in piano performance and pedagogy. At the University of Oregon, she was both a graduate teaching fellow and an adjunct instructor.

Dransfield will continue to teach at SCAA and is also starting a private studio — look for her new website www.dransfieldpianostudio.com soon! She will also continue to work as the business manager at Lorne Bair Rare Books, Inc., located on Millwood Avenue in The Mill at Abrams Creek, across the street from Shenandoah’s main campus.

I would like to thank my students over the years for teaching me how to continue to grow as a teacher and a human being.

– Lee Ann Dransfield