ABOUT

Our Mission

Canadian Online Guitar Lessons’ Kerilie McDowall assists you to develop your own unique artistic voice. Shape, develop and compose ideas. Explore the music that you love.

A supportive, patient approach that encourages students to learn at their own pace. Ages 8 and up online, age 6 and up in-studio. Children, teens, adults, seniors. Pop, country, blues, classical, jazz, folk, rock, includes guitar soloing, rhythm guitar, TAB, music reading, songwriting and improvisation. Creativity is encouraged.

Intensified accelerated learning for fast learners and professionals. Modified paces as needed for ADHD and others with disabilities with a focus on focusing on and enhancing within ability.

Supportive guitar, music, music industry, film/film industry, and writing instruction according to your specified level at your own pace. Guitar, music industry, writing and film workshop bootcamps. We take it step-by-step with novice beginners and offering services at your own pace, fast or slow, with quality and thorough instruction.

About Kerilie McDowall
Jazz guitarist/Guitar instructor/Filmmaker/Writer

Kerilie McDowall was the February 7, 2024 recipient of the Creative Innovator award from the Women of Influence WIN Awards sponsored by Inland Truck & Equipment. McDowall was grateful to her sponsor, and very honoured by the award, and feels that all of the 100 wonderful nominees are special. She was inspired by many of the nominees at the awards night. She was especially excited to honour and acknowledge the TV team who had trained her as a volunteer for seven years at Shaw Spotlight TV.

Background

Images by Dirk Heydemann of HA Photography.

In December 2021, first-time short documentary film director Kerilie McDowall was surprised to discover that she had peaked at almost 8.4 million hits and 6.4 million in July 2021 on the IMDB Pro STARmeter and had won an award for Best Director from the Seoul Short Film Festival in South Korea for her short film, "In the Zone: Rick Kilburn." Later Rick Kilburn on IMDB Pro's STARmeter peaked at 11.4+ million hits monthy or daily, and Kerilie peaking at 10 million in 2022, then Kilburn’s STARmeter shot up to 13 million at times in 2023, with Kerilie at 12.7 million in September 23’ and February ‘24.

The 13x award-winning short film was made possible thanks to the inspirational Nanaimo television team from Shaw Spotlight and gifted jazz bassist and music producer Rick Kilburn and his family.

Shaw Spotlight supervisor Cameron McLean had given the green light to Shaw Spotlight volunteer producer/host Kerilie to produce a short from Vancouver island. Kerilie felt that Kilburn, due to his natural storytelling abilities, gifts and talents, was the best fit for a local music short documentary. Rick Kilburn is very modest and at first had declined, but Kerilie finally convinced him it would be a great story for the public to enjoy.

Kerilie has been focused on jazz since her teens and has been documenting different recording artists and guests through different periods consisting of writing and radio spanning two decades and seven years of television work. She also was working formerly as a jazz guitarist and bandleader in Vancouver, BC for over a decade.

The short documentary team has been delighted that the jazz short picked up five awards in June and July 2021 for a total of eleven. The short picked up three of those awards in October 2021: an Honorable Mention at the Tokyo International Monthly Film Festival, and Best Documentary Short and Best Inspirational Film double Awards of Prestige from the Vegas Movie Awards. In October the film was selected by the Swedish International Film Festival, World Cinema Milan and Filmhaus Berlin. After this the short received a whopping 9 nominations in Berlin including: Best Documentary Short, Best Independent Film, Best Zero-Budget Short, Best First-Time / Directorial Debut, Short, Best Documentary Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Podcast or Documentary Host/Presenter. The short was also nominated at Paris, France’s Beyond the Curve International Film Festival and has been selected numerous times. Most recently the short has been selected at 2021 Milan FFI Film Fest International for Milan, where Kerilie and Technical Supervisor Todd Jones picked up an award for Best Editing of a Short Documentary. Kerilie and her cast and  crew have been very excited and honoured that the film was selected at the 2021 Hong Kong International Short Film Festival, China, and the 2022 Japan International Film Festival, Tokyo, where the documentary won distinguished awards in China and Japan for Best Documentary Short.

A former radio host and global Rhythm’a’ning jazz podcast producer, Kerilie McDowall's also known as a writer and has been a music critic/writer contributor for the American jazz magazine DownBeat (2016-2020). As a former volunteer live radio host, producer/on-air engineer (2000-2016) she became a #1 globally Google-ranked jazz podcast radio host on Player FM. McDowall interviewed Canada’s elite jazz and creative music artists including JUNO winners and Order of Canada recipients during her time in radio and while working on contract.

Her blog In the Zen is a Jazz and Creative music and lifestyle blog. Mountain writing, journeyed jazz, life. Exceptional Canadian and international jazz and creative artists interviewed. Interviews, music articles. Notes from the music and film industry. Journeyed quiet moments from Canadian wilderness-immersed lifestyle. Bald eagle, hummingbird-friended mountain-inspiration.

A Vancouver jazz guitarist, instructor and music composer(1989-2000), as well as a volunteer television Director/Host and Producer for the past 7 years, she enjoys teaching and working with music students and recording artists. Kerilie currently teaches guitar online with her business Canadian Online Guitar Lessons. She also teaches recording artists about crucial aspects of the music industry to aid their self-management and further their careers internationally. Kerilie offers workshops  and private coaching to new and established musician recording artists and aspiring writers.

McDowall sits on the Polaris Music Prize jury, judged the JUNO Awards from 2016-18 and last year, and has judged the prestigious annual jazz DownBeat Critics Poll for several years. McDowall judged young auditioning talent for Ontario’s Canadian Musicians Cooperative in 2022. 

Kerilie volunteer hosted/directed television shows at SHAW Spotlight. A past host of Community Producers, McDowall co-hosted with others as a volunteer on SHAW Spotlight Nanaimo, Canada’s The Show. As a volunteer television director, McDowall directed SHAW TV’s Coast Connections weekly from October 2015 until 2019, then bi-weekly in 2020 pre-COVID, as well as directing and hosting on other SHAW Spotlight television productions. She enjoys working with local community enjoying both Canadian and international work.

Kerilie released her first short mini-documentary film during COVID-19 on March 17, 2020 as a SHAW volunteer with the assistance of Todd Jones, Jocelyn Matwe and the SHAW Spotlight team. The film is titled, In the Zone: Rick Kilburn, Vancouver Island Bassist and Producer, or "In the Zone: Rick Kilburn," for short.  The Nanaimo mini-documentary film about Vancouver Island/Vancouver, BC resident jazz bassist/producer/composer Rick Kilburn, “In the Zone: Rick Kilburn,” in June 2021 achieved a third Hollywood award win. Film director and Canadian Polaris Music Prize juror Kerilie McDowall and her crew won the June 2021 Best Web and New Media award at IndieX Film Fest in Hollywood, Los Angeles. At Hollywood's Indie Short Fest the short received an Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Web and New Media and an Honorable Mention Award for Best Web and New Media at the Independent Shorts Awards in LA in March 2020. In June 2021, the short won Best Documentary at the London International Monthly Film Festival and Best Canadian Documentary at the Toronto Independent Film Festival of CIFT. In October 2022 the team and McDowall were excited to learn that the short won a twelfth distinguished award, with the short's win as Best Documentary Short at the Japan International Film Festival.

With a total of 16 awards that also include radio and jazz composition, McDowall won her thirteenth short TV film award when she won the Women of Influence (WIN) Creative Innovator Award on February 7, 2024.

She is currently #20th-ranked as a woman in the Best Biz contest out of the 9 million users on Alignable, and #1 on Alignable in Nanaimo, BC.

Contact by Email: https://poplme.co/sx3r8jLP/dash 
Email: [email protected] Phone: 1-(250)-668-3589