Monday, June 8th

Pianist and organist Nancy Dettbarn is Minister of Music and Organist at Westminster United Church in Orangeville, Ontario, and a member of the Music Faculty at the University of Toronto since 2007.   Nancy received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in the honors program at the prestigious Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  There she studied piano performance with master teacher John Perry and organ with Clyde Holloway.  

Ms. Dettbarn’s career spans over twenty- five years of teaching and performing music in both the United States and Canada.  She taught piano and pedagogy courses at both Rice University and later at Frostburg State University in Maryland before moving to Vancouver, B.C. where she collaborated extensively at the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver Academy.  Nancy has been a guest presenter at both the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy Conference and the World Piano Pedagogy Conference.  

She is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and one of just a handful of performing pianists qualified to teach the Technique, which helps musicians to maximize their potential by eradicating unnecessary effort and tension in their playing. 

Nancy is collaborative pianist for the Achill Choral Society which recently performed the Ontario premier of Elaine Hagenberg’s acclaimed “Illuminare” and the Mary McDonald Gloria.  She is a faculty member of Lakefield Summer Music Festival, has private piano studios in Toronto and Orangeville, is a dynamic adjudicator and clinician who gives workshops on piano and the Alexander Technique for musicians, and plays throughout the area and in the United States as a performer and collaborator.