Don Berner, saxophone
Allen Jacobson, trombone
Rob Thompson, piano
Andreas Wegner, bass
Tony Flanagan, drums
Don is one of the recipients of the 2013 Avenue Magazine Top 40 under 40 awards. JUNO award winner and jazz icon Hugh Fraser has stated, ”Don’s talent as a great saxophonist is supported by his compositional and band leading talents.” In addition to appearing alongside such notable jazz luminaries as P.J. Perry, Carol Welsman, Bobby Shew, Hugh Fraser, Slide Hampton, Bob Stroup, Chu Cho Valdez, Lew Tabackin, Guido Basso, and Tommy Banks, Hillario Duran, and commercial talents E.C. Scott, Frankie Valley, and the Temptations, he has performed at Edmonton's Jazz City Festival
and Yardbird Suite, Calgary’s Beatniq, Saskatoon’s The Bassment, Vancouver’s Celler, and numerous other jazz clubs and festivals throughout Canada and the U.S.
He was a featured artist at the 2011 Montreal Jazz Festival and was nominated for the Galaxie Rising Star award and the TD Canada Trust Jazz award. He has also been nominated for numerous mayoral arts awards, an Edmonton music award, and a Western Canadian Music Award. Berner was co-producer of Edmonton’s Yardbird Jazz Festival from 2005-07 and can be heard on numerous albums including four of his own.
He has performed at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Polish Embassy in Ottawa, as well as leading his sextet to Mexico’s Internacional Festival de Cervantino' and returning there to perform for the Canadian embassy's Canada Week. He has performed on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, numerous radio and TV specials, was the subject of one of CBC’s Concerts on Demand national broadcasts, as well as being broadcast nationally live on Tonic and Canada Live on CBC. Berner is also the former announcer and producer of A Time For Jazz, heard every Saturday on CKUA, as well as the writer for the jazz column Jazz Standards in Edmonton’s SEE Magazine. He created and directed Edmonton’s Horns for Hope project working with the men’s recovery unit at the Hope Mission for six years and in 2021 launched the first fully programmed professional Big Band concert season in Edmonton as the artistic director of the Don Berner Big Band.
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