Debbie has been a barbershopper for 14 years and in 2015 was one of the founding members of our chorus, Acappella Sound. Debbie took an active role from the start to support our founding Director, Tracey Bailey, in her vision to create an accomplished acappella chorus in the South West. Debbie has been our Team Leader since the chorus began and helped write many of our founding documents, including helping shape the ethos of the chorus. Debbie has embodied that ethos throughout her membership.
During her time as Team Leader, Debbie has given her full support to our now co-Directors, and has also supported all our chorus members, seeking always to nurture them and encourage them at all times. Debbie has carried out her duties as Team Leader with apparent ease, albeit, until she retired last year, she was also running an incredibly busy and highly successful family hospitality business. Debbie is always welcoming to new members, and her sense of fun, and overwhelming generosity of spirit is completely infectious. As well as fulfilling her role as Team Leader (until her retirement from that role this year), Debbie works hard at each rehearsal, always bringing her A game and A attitude, striving to be the best she can as a chorus member.
One of the things that makes Debbie really special is that she loves to see others blossom and succeed. She is always genuinely encouraging to help others reach their potential.
Debbie has always been ready to help organise events for the chorus and has organised four retreats for us, four convention trips, and variously in relation to these, all the associated hotels, dinners and transport. She has hosted fantastic parties, house concerts, and even opened her home to coaching sessions that have lasted for days, whilst never expecting anything in return at all.
Debbie loves sharing laughter, learning together and supporting each other. She undertakes her role with the utmost enthusiasm and determination and is an unsung hero, hardly ever missing a rehearsal. We really can’t praise her enough for what she does and has done over the last five years for us all.
Throughout Debbie’s barbershop life she has attended several educational events at regional level, and has also attended IES held in Manchester in 2019. She has competed in Sweet Adelines (at regional level) and been a member of various quartets and other acapella groups. Whilst starting her barbershop life as a tenor, Debbie has also sung lead and is now an accomplished baritone. Outside of rehearsal, although now retired, Debbie is an exemplary chef and accomplished gardener, working tirelessly to keep her garden and home in fantastic shape. Inside rehearsal she is an outstanding role model for our members.
The above describes why Debbie is our Woman of Note nomination this year. In short, she is a highly passionate, fun, inspiring and driven woman who enables, loves, mentors and shares all that she has with true generosity, and she is truly deserving of the accolade.
About Debbie
Debbie was always destined to perform! She was a member of Dartington Hall Choir in the 80’s and found barbershop in Cornwall, joining Champagne Cornwall Chorus (a former Sweet Adelines International chorus) in 2006. She made her debut in the quartet – Ain’t Misbehavin’, mic testing the Sweet Adelines International Region 31 Quartet contest in 2019 and now sings in quartet – Rumour Has It. Debbie has sung both lead and tenor, but has happily settled in baritone, and is an accomplished singer and performer. Debbie has sung in other groups, Soundbites Octet and now Synergy Octet and has attended many educational events organised by the region, and most recently the International Education Symposium in Manchester in 2019.