Johnston Turner, a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and her Master of Education in Music Education from the University of Victoria, B.C.

Her professional success is readily apparent on both sides of the border and abroad. She comes to Laurier from the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, where she served as the Director of Bands since 2014. She has also been a conductor for the Eastman School at the University of Rochester; the Society for New Music Ensemble in Syracuse, NY; the Paris Lodron Ensemble in Salzburg, Austria; the Orquesta Sinfonica de Heredia in Costa Rica; the Performing Arts Institute at Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania; and numerous honour ensembles in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. She has also presented her research on innovating the rehearsal and performance experience at numerous national and international conferences. 

Turner has been invited to present her research with teaching and technology, innovative rehearsal techniques, and service-learning and music performance at numerous conferences nationally and internationally. She is published in such journals as Music Educators Journal, Interdisciplinary Humanities, International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the World Association of Bands and Ensembles, Fanfare Magazine, and Canadian Winds, and has recorded CDs with the Innova and Albany labels.

• "Charlottesville and Citizen Artistry" (2019) NewMusicBox
• "Velocity Meadows" by Christopher Stark (2018) Hodgson Wind Ensemble, available on iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby
• "It's Not What We Do, It's How We Do It" (2018) NewMusicBox
• The New Winds of Change: the Evolution of the Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and Its Music, Frank Battisti (one of nine collegiate conductors interviewed for Chapter 23, “What Leaders Think,” (pp. 411–426)  plus citations on pp. 230, 251, 263, 327, 335, 380. Meredeth Music Publications, 2018
• The Conductor’s Companion: 100 Rehearsal Techniques, Imaginative Ideas, Quotes, and Facts, compiled and edited by Gary Stith. “iPad Rehearsals” p. 26, 2017
• "Music Here and Now" (Innova 970, 2017) Society for New Music, available on iTunes
• "Educators Can't Become Dinosaurs": USA Today OpEd, 2014