Loren Lichty was born in Los Angeles in June of 1957. He grew up at the edge of the Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles and attended Mayberry Street Elementary School, Thomas Starr King Jr. High School, and graduated from John Marshall High School in June 1975.
After high school, Loren attended Los Angeles City College, and went to work as an apprentice industrial glassblower for two years. In 1984, he then returned to LACC and earned an AS degree in Business Data Processing, as it was called then (the current terminology would be Information Technology), and then found employment with the Los Angeles Community College District.
Over the next 33 years, he worked his way up from Assistant Programmer, Analyst to Programmer, and finally to Analyst to Data Base System Specialist. Loren Lichty retired from the District at the end of 2017.
Loren first started in music with a brief, and not terribly notable, attempt to learn the violin in 1967. After torturing himself and his family, he switched to the flute in 1968 under the tutelage of Jazz/Big Band musician Norman Michea. Loren played flute in the symphony orchestras in both junior high and high school. Also, during high school, he developed an avid interest in folk dancing. During his first stint at LACC, he studied international folk dance with Maria Reisch.
Later on, Loren began to take folk dance classes from Richard Unciano, who was the founder and director of the Koroyar Folklore Ensemble. After attending a series of these classes, Richard invited him to join the group in June of 1977, as a dancer.
After dancing with Koroyar for about one year, Loren joined Koroyar’s band under the wing of Ronald Muller, who started the live music portion of the ensemble. He continued as a member of Koroyar through the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and to the present day. Loren became the acting director of Koroyar after the passing of Richard Unciano in 2005.
Starting in the year 1990, his brother, Norman Lichty, had the idea to form a group, and with himself, and Ronald Muller from Koroyar, Terra Nova was formed, which was devoted to creating a fusion of Balkan idioms, such as odd rhythms and modal scales, with modern idioms such as Western and Latin Jazz, and many innovative and original tunes were developed during those fertile years.
In 2005, through the LA Music Center’s “Get Your Chops Back” program, Loren played both Soprano and Alto flutes in a 90 piece flute choir. From 2011 to 2014, he also played Soprano and Alto flute with the Jewel City Flute Choir. Both choirs were under the baton of Francine Pancost.