snapshot

Kerry’s work encompasses roles from bassist to producer to educator to composer/arranger. Stylistically his wide interests have ranged from jazz (Juno Award-winners Altered Laws) to rap (Sweatshop Union), pop/opera (The Tenors), jazz fusion (The New Noakes Quartet, Crash), country (k.d. lang), variety (Bob Hope, Leon Bibb, Pat Boone, “pops” with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra), klezmer (Olam), “Buddha Bar” style lounge/chillout (Astrid), Afro-Cuban (World Music Award winner Gabriel Palatchi Trio, the Fito Garcia Bass Ensemble), Balkan/Flamenco (Tambura Rasa, featuring the Black Dog String Quartet) funk, R&B, reggae, Brazilian, musical theatre and more. Kerry is also co-founder and Musical Director of Steelin’ in The Years, a loving tribute to the music of Steely Dan.

performance highlights

kd lang – Sweatshop Union – The Canadian Tenors – Randy Bachman – Bob Hope – Leon Bibb – Renee Rosnes – Bobby Shew – Carol Welsman – Junction – Hugh Fraser – Brad Turner – Phil Dwyer – Michael Blake – Ron Johnston – Oliver Gannon – Ihor Kukurudza – The Fito Garcia Bass Ensemble – Tambura Rasa – Steelin’ In The Years – Altered Laws – The Daryl Jahnke Group – Triode – Karin Plato – Kate Hammett-Vaughan – John Korsrud’s Hard Rubber Orchestra – Alma Libre – Rumba Calzada – The New Ozone Rangers – theatre credits including Fire – Love Is Strange – Jesus Christ Superstar – Godspell – Sideshow – Leon Bibb – Herman Muller – Jake and Elwood’s Blues Brothers Revue – Six Women With Braindeath – Anyone Can See I Love You

the other side of the glass

Kerry has been studio bassist on hundreds of albums for artists such as Sweatshop Union (Local 604), Dan Mangan (Postcards and Daydreaming), Curtis (Portrait Of The Artist), M (a.k.a. Robin Scott, “Pop Music 2K”). In the last decade alone  Kerry’s eclectic production work has ranged from acoustic folk (Michael Friedman (Random Acts Of Tuning – 2016) to the electronic lounge/chillout of Astrid (Red Umbrella 2005 and Full Life 2012) and R&B/jazz with Steve Hilliam (Inside The Lines, 2008). His work for film and TV has included music editing for the Cartoon Network’s Ed, Edd and Eddy and Dead Heat with Kiefer Sutherland;  his “miscellaneous musical duties” have included the creation of charts and transcriptions for Randy Bachman’s DVD/book release Every Song Tells A Story.

as educator

Kerry’s teaching experience began nearly forty years ago as a private bass teacher at Philips Music in Richmond in the 1980s, and he has taught continuously since then. As a classroom teacher, Kerry has taught post-secondary courses since 1991 on topics including Music Theory, Theory of Record Production and Electronic Music, as well as specialized courses in software platforms like Ableton Live, Reason, Reaper, Logic and Sibelius. He is developing the world’s first narrative-form graphic-novel-format Music Theory text for engineers, producers and managers entitled Bare Knuckle, Full Contact Music Theory (That You Will Actually Use).

Kerry’s teaching experience includes Bass PMI at Capilano University (or Capilano College, as it was known at the time, and where he created their first jury criteria for B.Mus in Bass Performance in 1992), the Pacific Audio Visual Institute, the Trebas Institute, the Harbourside Institute Of Technology (now SAE Vancouver), the Courtney Youth Music Center and the New Westminster Jazz Clinic, and has also included music clinics abroad with Peter Oxley’s Paris-based New Noakes Quartet. Kerry’s private bass students have included such now-prominent bassists as Marc Rogers, Andre Lachance and Darren Radtke, who have gone on to become the respected practitioners and educators of the next generation. Along with bassists Laurence Mollerup, Chris Tarry and Andre Lachance, he co-founded the Vancouver Bass Conference (a 3 day “bass boot camp”), has collaborated on Logic Networks (the third-party manual for Logic 2.6) and was a founding contributor to Activebass.com where his online bass lessons garnered a staggering 1,000,000+ hits and consistently remained amongst Activebass’s “Top 10 Most Popular Lessons” out of 9000+ for over a decade. Long years of online educational experience sparked Kerry’s interest in Classroom 2.0/Flipped Learning techniques; he deploys his current course content for private institutes using collaborative online learning environments like edmodo.com and schoology.com.

studies

Simon Fraser University (2020-) [working towards M.Ed, Arts Education]

Vancouver Community College (2014 – 2020) [B.Mus, Composition]

Capilano College (’92) [arranging, MIDI music]

Banff School of Fine Arts (‘85/86 summer sessions) [advanced jazz studies with Dave Holland (Miles Davis), Dave Liebman (Miles Davis), Marvin “Smitty” Smith (Wynton Marsalis), Don Thompson, John Abercrombie, Steve Coleman, Julian Priester, Cecil Taylor]

Vancouver Community College (‘81-83) [performance, Bass]

industry service

Pacific Music Industry Association (Board member 1994/5, Government Relations committee, West Coast Music Awards committee)

Pacific Jazz Inventors Association (President 1991-6)

Vancouver Musicians Association Local 145 (signatory)

National Association of Macintosh Trainers (member)

Fraser MacPherson Scholarship Fund (juror)

MITAP (juror)

Board member/chair, Network4Musicians

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