Lynn Noel has a voice of striking clarity and power, as wide and deep as her repertoire. She is equally at home in a flowing, traditional ballad or a rousing sea chantey, delivered in English or French. She sings in fourteen languages from Gaelic to Zulu to Inuktitut, accompanying herself and her harmony groups on mountain dulcimer, guitar, bodhran, spoons, and stepdancing feet. What is her favorite instrument? " C'est simple. The audience."
Lynn Noel's deep roots in a cappella harmony reach back through twenty-five years of all-night sings from Newfoundland to California. Her vast repertoire encompasses morris and pub songs, chanteys and sea music, ballads and choruses from gospel to doo-wop. A choral singer since the age of nine with greater Boston's Youth Pro Musica, Lynn sang lead and alto with the a cappella trio The Spontaneous Triad in Madison, WI in the mid-1980s, and with the world music quartet Lingua Franca in Boston from 1998-2002, as well as participating in sacred harp, West Gallery, madrigal, and early music societies. On mountain dulcimer, she plays voyageur and Viking melodies, music of Newfoundland and the Great Lakes, and Celtic tunes with the Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society, with whom she is also lead singer. She is a founding member of the Single Malt and Song Society, a tasting club for traditional singers whose motto is "a bottle of the best in harmony." Lynn brings the raw, energetic sound of English harmony and the driving beat of work songs to her grassroots leadership wherever unaccompanied songs are sung.
Often taken for a Canadian, this bilingual wild goose sometimes claims protection under the Migratory Waterfowl Act. Lynn is a true North American with family roots in Bluenose Nova Scotia, Moravian Minnesota, and both Yankee and Irish Boston. After sojourns in the Great Lakes, Atlantic Canada, Vermont, and the Ottawa Valley, she returned to her home port of Boston in 1998 as a technical writer and editor. This transition into software soon led her to reapply her writing and analytical skills and experience as a business analyst for web applications.
A graduate of Dartmouth College and Research Fellow of Dartmouth's Institute of Arctic Studies (1992-1998), Lynn holds a M.S. in human/environment Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and several international awards of excellence in environmental education and heritage interpretation.