The OMEA is pleased to announce that Neil Yorke-Slader has been nominated and recognized by his peers as an Honourary Life Member of our organization.
Neil Yorke-Slader is well known throughout Canada for his dedication to education and the arts, as a teacher, school and board administrator, composer, clinician, adjudicator, author and publisher. Neil has composed numerous works at various levels for jazz ensemble, over 45 of which are available through UNC Jazz Press and Burnihla Music Publishing. several are preserved by the National Library of Canada (Archives). He has written several commissions for elementary and high school jazz ensembles, and was one of the eight contributing composers to the inaugural Canadian “New Sounds of Learning Project”. Neil taught music at the elementary and secondary levels for 17 years in Ottawa. He is the Regional Coordinator of the Capital Region Music Festival.
Neil was the recipient of the 1999 Ottawa International Jazz Festival’s “Achievement Award” and in 1991 received the International Association of Jazz Educators Award for Contribution to Jazz Education. He was a contributor to “Jazz Pedagogy, A Canadian Perspective” (available through ArtistShare). He received the 1998 City of Nepean’s Distinguished Service Award for Education, and
their 1995 Distinguished Award for Arts and Culture. He was honoured with the 2007 Marjorie Loughrey Lifetime Achievement Award for continual and distinguished excellence in arts education over the course of a teaching career. He was named to the Musicfest Canada Hall of Fame in 2016.
He directs the renowned Nepean All-City Jazz Band, one of Canada’s pre-eminent student jazz ensembles for the last 30 years.
We are grateful to Neil for his incredible contributions to our profession in Ontario and beyond. Congratulations on receiving this very high honour!
~Isaac Moore, OMEA President
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