Staff & Faculty BIO

Baptista_Denis

Denis Baptista

Music Instructor & Songwriting Program Director
denis.baptista@prairie.edu
403-443-5511 ext 444

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.

Courses

HF 151 How Music Works
MU 167/168 Sight Read/Ear Train
WA 120 Introduction to Songwriting
WA 121/122/221 Songwriting
WA 123/124 The Language of Music
WA 224 Arranging Songs
WA 228 The Language of Music & Writing
WA 229 Language of Music & Charting
WA 232 How Musicians Work
WA 235 Music Business
WA 373/374 EP Project