Kerry’s difficult to define. His performance and recording credits alone sprawl from jazz (Juno winners Altered Laws), fusion (New Noakes Quartet, Crash), rap (Sweatshop Union), operatic pop (The Tenors), country (k.d. lang), variety (Bob Hope, Leon Bibb, Pat Boone), “pops” (Vancouver Symphony Orchestra), klezmer (Olam), “Buddha Bar” 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 much more.

Kerry also leads Steelin’ in The Years, a loving tribute to the music of Steely Dan.

the other side of the glass

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 even included the creation of charts and transcriptions for Randy Bachman’s DVD/book release Every Song Tells A Story.

as educator

Kerry’s love for teaching began nearly forty years ago as he rose from private bass instructor at a local music store to being asked to teach Electric Bass at Capilano College (now Capilano University). There, he would create Cap’s first jury criteria for B.Mus in Bass Performance (’92). His private bass students have themselves gone on to become the respected practitioners and educators of the next generation. While covering a colleague’s class, Kerry discovered a love for classroom teaching, and since then he has taught numerous post-secondary courses on musical topics such as 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.

Along with bassists Laurence Mollerup, Chris Tarry and Andre Lachance, he helped co-found the Vancouver Bass Conference (a 3 day “bass boot camp”). He has been an early and enthusiastic adopter of online learning, collaborating on Logic Networks (a third-party manual for Logic 2.6) in the early 1990s, 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.

studies

MA, Liberal Studies {SFU, in progess)

M.Ed, Arts Education (SFU, ’22)

B.Mus, Composition (VCC, ’20)

Banff School of Fine Arts summer sessions ’85/86; 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