Debra is a pedagogy specialist whose students have earned the Cora B. Arhens Award for pedagogy excellence. She is principal and founding member of Northern Lights Canadian National Conservatory of Music and the three-day Piano Pedagogy workshop, Summer Sizzle. Debra has served at the local and provincial levels of the ORMTA, is the founder of the North Wellington Camerata Canada Music Week Festival and worked for many years as music secretary to the Midwestern Ontario Rotary Music Festival.
Her piano solos and ensembles have been selected for performance at festivals across Canada; for inclusion in the New Millennium, Contemporary Idioms, Northern Lights and Making Tracks Series; the RCM Popular Selection List; and reviewed in Clavier Magazine. Debra has edited, revised and written new material for the Leila Fletcher piano course (Mayfair/Montgomery Music), the James Lawless Theory Course (Waterloo Music) and arranges pop music for the ProMusic Company in California. Her most recent books/materials include two Rhythm Workbooks, Elementary Harmony and Melody Writing, Let’s Begin Primer A and B, 101 Children’s Pieces, A Jazzy Day, Midnight Jazz, Matinee Jazz, Keyboard Harmony Books 1 – 3, Classy Piano Pieces, Boogie and Jazz Piano Styles, Groovin’ and What a Wonderful World in Big Note and Intermediate piano solos, and intermediate Sacred Jazz Solos, Creative Learning as well as many other titles.
Debra’s pedagogy materials and compositions are also used and performed in Australia, Brazil, China, England, Guam, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and throughout North America. She is the recipient of the ORMTA Special Teacher Award, the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada, and a finalist for 2011 Louis Applebaum Composer Award for Music for Young People.
