Tim Bedner & Bill Coon

Bill Coon (guitar) and Tim Bedner (guitar)

Thank you to John & Linda Wilson for Generously Sponsoring this Concert!

Join two of Canada's finest jazz guitarists for an intimate and evocative evening of standards and original compositions. Hailing from Vancouver, Juno-nominated guitarist Bill Coon and Ottawa's award-winning guitar master Tim Bedner explore the art of the duo as they treat you to a wonderful evening of interplay, lyricism, harmonic richness and subtle nuances.

Bill Coon -  Juno nominated artist Bill Coon is one of Canada’s most highly respected musicians and is winner of the 2009 National Jazz Awards, ‘Guitarist of the Year’.  Performing professionally for over thirty years, he has played with many significant jazz artists including Jimmy Heath, Chuck Israels, Eddie Daniels, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Bucky Pizzarelli, Sheila Jordan, Hugh Fraser, P.J. Perry, Campbell Ryga, Ian McDougall, Phil Dwyer, Dave Restivo, Brad Turner, Carol Welsman, Fred Stride, Dee Daniels, and Rebecca Kilgore.

Among Bill’s more than fifty recordings are Speakeasy, and Scudder’s Groove featuring Juno award winners Ross Taggart and Dave Robbins, With Benefits with Cory Weeds, Lewis Nash and Peter Washington. His collaboration with award-winning guitarist Oliver Gannon: Two Much More! was acclaimed as one of the top ten Canadian jazz recordings of 2015 by the CBC, as was Jill Townsend Big Band’s Legacy, The Music of Ross Taggart, a tribute to the great Ross Taggart that features Bill’s guitar playing and large ensemble writing. He also appears on award-winning recordings by The Night Crawlers and the Big Band Sound, Down in the Bottom and Calgary guitarist Ralf Buschmeyer’s, Jazzspeak.

Bill is busy performing with and composing for the BC Double Quartet featuring Brad Turner, Brasiliera with Jennifer Scott and Rene Worst, Triology, with Miles Black and Jodi Proznick, Oliver Gannon, Laura Crema, Cory Weeds Quartet, Tony Wilson-Bill Coon Quartet, B3 Kings, Kate Hammett-Vaughan, Steve Maddock, Michael Creber, Mike Allen, Kevin Elaschuk, Kristina Olsen, and the Minemoto/Coon/Danderfer Trio.

An in demand composer-arranger, Bill had recently had two of his arrangements for symphony orchestra and voice appear on the recording ‘True North: The Canadian Songbook’ with Eleanor McCain. He has been commissioned to write for The National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Woody Herman Jazz Band, the Jill Townsend Jazz Orchestra, the CBC Radio Orchestra, and John Korsrud’s Hard Rubber Orchestra. Bill's musical partnership with jazz vocalist Denzal Sinclaire created the Juno nominated CD, I Found Love. Bill’s association with hip-hop artist K-os resulted in a collaboration with the CBC Radio Orchestra documented in the CBC television show Burning to Shine, and his arranging is featured on the Juno award winning CD Joyful Rebellion.

He has won awards and commissions from the BC Arts Council, the Socan Foundation, and has received several Canada Council Arts Awards enabling him to study with Jim Hall, Dr. Louis Stewart, Neil Chotem and Rick Wilkins. Bill is currently working on a recording of original music due out in fall of 2017 that is being funded by a Canada Council recording grant.

Bill is an adjudicator and clinician at music festivals and workshops throughout Canada, including the VSO School of Music and Summer Jazz Workshop and the BC Swing Workshop in Sorrento BC. He is on faculty at Capilano University in North Vancouver, teaching composition, arranging, jazz history, small and large ensembles, and jazz guitar.  billcoon.com

Tim Bedner is a modern lyrical composer and improviser, and an award-winning teacher and performer on six- and seven-string guitars. Reviewers have called him “a talent and a force, playing with grace, style, passion, and inventiveness.” His CD recording “Of Light and Shadow” debuted in the #1 spot of the CMJ jazz chart, where it remained in the Top 40 for four weeks.

Tim received his undergraduate training at Berklee College of Music (Boston MA), graduating summa cum laude, and a Masters Degree with distinction in Jazz Performance at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh PA).  He is a performance instructor of jazz guitar at Carleton University, and is the founding director of the Guitar Ensemble. In addition to composing, Tim creates arrangements and guitar instructional materials, and gives workshops, master classes, and private lessons - both online and at Alcorn Music Studios, where he has created a number of performance development classes for adults. He is the founding board President of the GigSpace Performance Studio, and is the assistant director of the Carleton University Summer Jazz Camp. Prior to relocating to Ottawa ON, Tim was an adjunct professor of guitar at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh PA for 8 years. He was also on the music faculty at St. Vincent College.

Tim performs extensively throughout the Ottawa-Gatineau region. A gifted and sought-after accompanist, he has performed with many well-known musicians across a variety of genres. Tim has shared a stage with artists as diverse as jazz guitar icon John Abercrombie, national fingerstyle champion Pat Donohue (NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor), Broadway diva Bernadette Peters, the Segovia of jazz guitar Gene Bertoncini, fusion band Spyro Gyra, saxophonist and composer Oliver Lake, Pittsburgh veteran jazz drummer Roger Humphries, flamenco guitarist Marija Temo, bluesman Ernie Hawkins,  and members of The Fringe (George Garzone & John Lockwood) and the New York Voices. Additionally, Tim has performed with Canadian jazz icons bassist Dave Young, trumpeter Kevin Turcotte, and guitarists Bill Coon, Lorne Lofsky, and Mike Rud.  

Discography:     Spare Skirt - Katie Ditschun    Portrait Intime - Claude Brazeau     C'est à moi - Dominique Forest     Live at GigSpace - Mike Tremblay     Of Light and Shadow - Tim Bedner     Capital Vox Sings Elise Letourneau - choral works     I Will Sing for You - Elise Letourneau & band     One Little Child - Doug Worth with Peter Eldridge    timbedner.com

Tickets for in-person concert only.

Tickets are non-refundable.