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Kerilie McDowall

Jazz guitarist, Polaris Music Prize juror, Former DownBeat contributor, 12x Award-winning 10x nominated short TV movie Director, Short Filmmaker, former Rhythm'a'ning jazz radio host.

About Me

Kerilie McDowall, a jazz guitarist/composer, and 12x international award-winning jazz Filmmaker is a past TV Director and jazz radio producer/host. Altogether she has won 15 awards, with six from the USA. (https://filmfreeway.com/KerilieMcDowall)

McDowall is a York University music graduate, and a film/guitar/musician/writer coach/instructor and is a Polaris Music Prize juror and DownBeat Critics Poll judge. She is the winner of Nanaimo's 2024 WIN Women of Influence Creative Innovator Award for her film, In the Zone Rick Kilburn, and is the writer of the In the Zen blog.

Kerilie McDowall is additionally a freelance and a national music writer. She is the owner of Canadian Online Guitar Lessons & Creative Services, and as a past publicist is a recording musician’s self-empowerment Canadian music industry instructor and coach. She also enjoys teaching and mentoring guitarists.

McDowall was a DownBeat music writer contributor monthly until the 2020 pandemic. She was a jazz bandleader-guitarist and composer in the 1990s in Vancouver. Her writing is in DownBeat, All About Jazz, Canadian Musician Inspired 55+, and other publications. McDowall's jazz, lifestyle, and arts blog, In the Zen, is worth a read. McDowall is still judging as a DownBeat Critics Poll critic. She works with rising star and JUNO Award and Order of Canada-winning recording artists and aspiring young musicians.

McDowall's film In the Zone: Rick Kilburn reached 13 million hits in 2023, 12.7 million in February 2024 and she ranked in 2024 as #39th in the contest for #1 Biz Person in North America and #1 in Nanaimo, BC on the popular business networking site with 8 million members, Alignable.

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