Staff & Faculty BIO
Denis Baptista
Music Instructor & Songwriting Program Director
denis.baptista@prairie.edu
Education
- Bachelor of Music, Composition – University of Campinas, Brazil
- Master of Music, Composition – University of Calgary, Canada
Awards
- Queen Elizabeth II Graduate (Master’s) Scholarship – 2014
- Richard Johnston Award for advanced skills in chamber music composition – 2015
- Outstanding accomplishments by the Government of Alberta – 2015
- Awarded piano trio Kosmos at the Land’s End National Composers Competition (Canada) – 2015
- Winner of the International mini-Opera Competition with the mini-opera The Incredible Journey – 2018
Background
Denis is a professional composer, pianist, arranger, orchestrator, and educator. His compositions cover a variety of genres: songs, instrumental, choir, orchestral, soundtracks for TV, dance, and music for theatre. He has special passion studying Brazilian music and bringing a different flavour to his performances and compositions.
He is an active pianist who gives concerts, workshops, and master classes in conferences and events having already presented and performed in Europe, North America and South America.
Denis also served as worship leader and music director in two churches in Brazil and one church in Calgary. He is passionate about training new musicians in worship ministries and seeing them grow in both their musicianship and relationship with Jesus Christ.
He loves working with students and is committed to providing solid knowledge and supervised practice to help them become the best musicians they can be.