Getting to know....... Debra Levray

Since joining our community in 2025, Debra has contributed much to the development of our musical life here at Holy Trinity, helping establish and now leading our ever-growing ‘pop-up’ choir. Gerard Jordan talked to Debra about the role of music and church in her life and how she came to settle in France and discover Holy Trinity.

The place of church and music in Debra’s early life

Music played a central role in the early life of Debra and her family in Washington DC. At high school she was a voice performance major and both her mother and her father were keen singers. Although her family were regular churchgoers at the United Methodist Church, Debra’s principal experience of church life at that time was as a paid singer; indeed, throughout her life Debra’s churchgoing has often been as a professional musician, working in churches across a range of different denominations.

Debra explains that likewise, her life as a professional musician has developed through singing and leading religious vocal music. “I remember when I was sixteen that my first solo was Handel’s  ‘I know that my redeemer  liveth’ , and then from High School I went on to study sacred and classical music full-time at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. After graduation I moved to New York where I had three jobs as a musician at different inter-denominational churches, along with other pop and jazz studio work .” It was in New York that Debra also started doing some modelling that in turn led to her long-term connection with France. “In 1988 some friends who I’d met through modelling said to me why don’t you come along with us to Paris as we are going to be working at the spring fashion show. Well I went along with them and got some work thinking it would just be for a few months and it ended up being for ten years!”

In Paris Debra initially got a few jobs singing jazz and pop standards and this in turn led to further singing work for her in Switzerland and the Canary Isles. During this time she also met her future husband David who is a French bass player and they decided to settle in Paris.  It was there that Debra gave birth to her elder daughter Abby in 1990 and then her younger daughter Chloe in 1993. Debra continued to sing in hotels and clubs in France for the next few years, while at the same time raising her two daughters. Then in 1998 the family all moved to Los Angeles, where David played in Jazz Clubs, Debra started doing some work directing church music and the girls were enrolled at the Lycée Français.

Debra’s spiritual journey

At this time Debra had not been a regular churchgoer for a number of years, but when she started working at a local Nazarene Church she was truly impressed by the Pastor, Rob Songer: “Pastor Rob’s preaching really impressed me and touched my heart; I had never heard a minister before who touched my mind and spirit like Rob did.” So Debra took her girls along to church with her and got baptized there.

The ensuing years in California became a time of great physical and emotional challenges for Debra, but looking back now she sees this also as a time when her spiritual journey evolved. “During an epidemic in 2000 I contracted pneumonia. I became very sick for the first time in my life and had to be hospitalized for a long time; what I remember most about this were the Catholic nuns who looked after me and how kind and simple and sweet they all were. Then, in 2004 my marriage broke up which caused me such distress that it put a real strain on my mental health too. I remember how once I left the house feeling I had to walk to the convent where those Nuns were based, as I just wanted to talk to Jesus and felt that was where I could find the answer, but I never got there and ended up sitting on the pavement.”

The next two years were no better for Debra. In the autumn of 2005 she discovered she had an aggressive cancer and she started chemotherapy treatment immediately; however, things got even worse when on new year’s day she suffered serious burns in an accident at a barbecue. “I was admitted to hospital in immense pain and my body rejected the morphine that they gave me. And yet in the midst of such phenomenal pain somehow I found peace: I accepted death and gave thanks for what a great life I had had. It was like an out of body experience where I looked down on myself and felt grateful to the creator of all things and somehow experienced joy.”  But Debra did not die; she recovered and still wonders at the miracle of her recovery. “I came to terms with what my cancer was and re-started treatment once I had recovered from my burns.”

Debra’s treatment ended in 2006, but as anyone who has experienced cancer treatment knows the after-effects can last many years. “I was aware of how I looked scary to people after my burns and my cancer treatment, so I lost touch with the Nazarene church and felt drawn to explore a broader spirituality,” and so it was that Debra took up Yoga which she still continues to teach today. “I started Yoga classes and trained to be a teacher, thinking this might be the spirituality to follow. However, when I tried an Ashram I realised that I wasn’t attracted to the religious side of Yoga, so now I focus purely on the physical side of it.” Debra goes on to explain “I have respect for all established religions, feeling that for different people in different contexts they can lead to the creator, but for me going to church and singing the songs I know is what gives me joy. I reckon Jesus showed that although we can’t comprehend the cosmos, if I focus day to day on his teachings then that’s the route for me.”

Coming to France and discovering Holy Trinity

During her time back in the United States Debra used to regularly bring her daughters over to France for holidays but had never come to Nice. She had moved back to Washington DC in 2014 following the death of her father and she describes how in 2016 “an old French friend called Virginie who lived in Nice said I should come and see her, and so I did and stayed for three months and then continued to come back each year. I remember Virginie saying that I should check out Holy Trinity but I never did.”  COVID inevitably paused Debra’s visits to the Riviera but she returned again in 2025, planning initially to stay just a few weeks in an apartment she’d found in Cagnes-sur-Mer but then she deciding to stay on  ..... and she is still here! Not long after settling in Cagnes, Debra was introduced by a friend to Margi MacDuffie who runs our monthly lunchtime concerts at Holy Trinity; so Debra came along to a concert and Margi introduced her to Father Jeremy who said he was looking for someone to help direct the choir and Debra offered to help, and that’s how she came to know our church.

Debra goes on to explain:  “I don’t know if it was about getting back to where I had come from or whether it was about how I had evolved, but here I’ve found my spirit awakened again. At Holy Trinity I’ve had the sense that we are all one, coming together in this finite life, and I don’t know if I would have recognised that right now if I had not been through all the experiences that I’ve had. We are blessed to be alive and to appreciate this time that we have be to alive". Debra adds: “I really love the Thursday morning communion services; when Jeremy preaches about the word of God, the message resonates with me after all I’ve been through in my life. Looking back I can see the miracles that there have been in my life both in tough times and also in earlier years. For me Christ’s teaching is about recognising that we are all human beings and should take care of one another; in these times of global difference it can be hard to know how to help, so I go by how my heart feels and how my spirit feels, hoping that minds can be opened through the spirit and that hope can be given to every human being regardless of where we come from, as we are all one human race and children of God, the creator of all things.”