Teachers

Here at the Academy, the teachers are our most important resource.

Linda Lowry-Campbell

Linda has been a teacher at the Academy of Music for 4 years and hosts our spring and christmas recitals as well. She is an experienced and dedicated teacher, as any one of her devoted students would tell you, and she is an active member of the St. James Anglican church choir in Paris. She has a level 8 certification from the Royal Conservatory of Music and a grade 2 theory

Valerie Hawkins Valerie has spent over 20 years as a professional actor/singer. Highlights include three years on Broadway in the mega musical Ragtime, an off-Broadway production of Starmites where she got to terrorize humans, as well as touring North America and Hawaii in Les Miserables. As well as being a successful performer, Val has been teaching and coaching both voice and acting for over 10 years and knows you never stop learning. most recently Val could be seen playing Marilla Cuthbert in the Charlottetown festival production of Anne of Green Gables. She has a degree in performance from Queens University.

 Rebecca Harding  

Rebecca specializes in training younger singers at the Academy. She has been singing for most of her life both in choirs and classes. She has been with the Academy for five years and has been teaching for two.

Rachel McNeil

Rachel MacNeil has studied piano for sixteen years and has been teaching for the past six.  First studying under the late Norah Langton and currently under Nelson McClinchy, Rachel is completing her Grade 10 RCM practicum.  In the past three years she has completed her grade 3, 4, and 5 History and Harmony requirements for her degree, as well as accompanied the Choir of St. Basil's Parish Community on piano and vocals in the past.  She is currently completing her honours degree at McMaster University in Classics, Linguistics, and Latin.

Margaret Herczeg

Margaret has been playing guitar and keyboard for more than 20 years. She is currently an Ontario-certified elementary school teacher and brings the experience of her teaching career to her music students.

Dan Taylor

Dan has been teaching music for more than 15 years. He has also been working in audio since 1990, starting from  classical recordings of the Te Deum chamber orchestra, to recording reggae, punk and everything in between at studios in Hamilton, Toronto and now (in the fifth year) at Charing Cross Sound in Brantford, Ontario. In between he  worked at Aztec and Soho common studios in Hamilton and, later, Film Sound One in Toronto doing sound for documentaries and feature films like 'Wilby Wonderful' starring Emmy winner Sandra Oh and Paul Gross, and  'The Take', a documentary by Avi Lewis.  More recently, Dan has been recording and  mastering  tracks for dozens of artists and producing live theater soundtracks for professional stage shows. He found time to attend McMaster University in Music/Multimedia and has a Recording Arts Canada certificate for audio engineering and production.

Jessica Annand

 Jessica has studied classical piano for 9 years and has been teaching for the past 5.
She is currently attending Mohawk College for Applied Music, and has her grade 1 and 2 theory, and is working on her Grade 10 RCM practicum. She is working on completing her 3 year music program at Mohawk

Silas Chinsen  Bio coming soon

Nick Bastien    Bio coming soon