If you’re on this page, you’ve been invited to A Concert for Jill, an afternoon of music to celebrate the memory of Jill Eicher, my late wife. This page introduces you to the many musicians who are helping make this event so special.

John Coinman

Joanne Wong

Born on an Army base in San Francisco, I grew up listening to my parents’ record collection including Armed Forces marches, big band music, Mantovani, classical, opera and pop music. Music was always playing in our quarters. Upon first hearing the Everly Brothers on the radio, I immediately fell in love with them–they taught me to sing harmony. When we moved to Oahu, I listened to Hawaii’s KPOI radio. In addition to the usual top-forty fare, it broadcast Hawaiian pop music ,which often incorporated steel guitar. In the 4th grade, I learned to play my first instrument, the ukulele, when our class was given the choice of study group, or uke lessons. No brainer!

In college (back on mainland), I met my soon-to-be husband, Pudgy Wong, who played pull string Telecaster, 5 string banjo, keyboards, bass and pedal steel guitar. It was love at first jam session since we were one of the few Asian Americans who were into the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt and other country rock artists. He also was probably the only Trotskyist who was into Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. He started playing in country honky tonks around the San Francisco Bay Area including Cowtown in San Jose, the West 40 Club in Hayward and DeMarco’s 23 Club (if their name was Hank, they played there) in Brisbane. With Pudgy’s recommendation, I started playing bass with country bands in Alameda, Sunnyvale and Vallejo.
We started a band in the 1970s, hired Ron Tanner on drums and Candy Girard on fiddle.  We played gigs around the Bay Area and toured Nevada. When Ron left the band for grad school, we stopped playing gigs for a living and concentrated on starting a music store. We played gigs now and then but definitely used the business side of our brains thereafter. I lost Pudge, my soul mate and love of my life, in 2016 to cancer. I ran the store by myself for another four years and retired in 2020.

While music is still extremely important to me, arthritis and tendon problems make it difficult to play an instrument. And, singing in the same keys as in my 20’s is unrealistic. But, music is so much a part of me that I find ways to play informally with old band mates and college friends. Ironically, the ukulele and U-Bass are still do-able and lowering songs a step or two doesn’t hurt my ego!

Candy Girard

Candy Girard studied classical violin as a child while growing up in a family with folk music and old cowboy songs sung and played. She started fiddling in her teens, playing bluegrass and country swing in her 20’s and has since expanded her expertise to include jazz and classical. Recording highlights include playing on the soundtrack for the TV series, “Firefly,” video game “World of Starcraft,” recording with Mason Williams, and The Jerry Garcia Band album, “Cats Down Under the Stars.” She has toured with Shirley Bassey, Johnny Lee, country music icon Hank Thompson, as well as Wayne Foster and the Raiders Band under the direction of Horace Heights. Her touring dates have included stints with Circus Flora with the Flying Walendas.

Candy has received the honor of fiddle player of the year for both Los Angeles and California from the California Country Music Association and has been inducted into the South Australia Country Music Hall of Fame and has appeared on national television on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, backing up stars such as Clint Black and Tanya Tucker. She played square dance music on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, backed up star contestants on both American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, as well as Wayne Brady on “Who’s line is it Anyway.” Currently she performs with the “Hot Licks,” Kevin Russell, and others on the California music scene.

Steve Berryman

Steve got his musical start in southern California. His bass style was influenced by session players like Carol Kaye and the iconic L.A. Wrecking Crew who backed hundreds of hits. Bass-heavy Motown records were also an inspiration. Styles changed with the “British Invasion”, and he evolved along with them into folk-rock, then psychedelic music. He played Hollywood clubs in The Columbia Bicycle. After they disbanded and the army draft rejected him as “too tall”, he worked his way around Europe and did occasional gigs in Germany and London. He returned to L.A. in ’69 and was hired to join the blues band Day and Age in St. Louis. They moved to San Francisco to play the Fillmore changing the name to Harbinger.
Steve’s technical skills landed him work at Berkeley’s Sierra Sound Labs recording studios helping manufacture the world’s first mixing console using integrated circuit “chips” designed by the iconic Ray Dolby’s partner Bob Orban, founder of Parasound. He helped design and build his own Outback Recording Studio in Oakland with his former Harbinger band mate Wilson Dyer (current holder of four Audio Excellence Emmys for Star Trek: Next Generation). He did bass and guitar session work, engineering, and producing acts of many different styles. He joined John J. Coinman and Indiscreet in the late seventies. When John made his move to Hollywood, Steve immediately joined San Francisco new-wave band The Ironics. When they disbanded, family obligations and work as a senior telecommunications systems specialist sidelined professional music. In retirement he now enjoys playing “just for fun”. He is currently working on experimental modalities with talented Marin County guitarist Dave Mazza who has toured Europe with Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew. Hopefully additional “just for fun” projects are just ahead.

Dale Wright

Dale Wright started his musical life playing trumpet in church at 9. Piano and guitar followed. After majoring in music at UNC, he moved to Washington DC and then the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue a career as a guitarist. Dale performed across California and DC for around 25 years as a guitarist and singer in a wide variety of bands and duos. His day jobs were computer programming and TV directing. Returning to North Carolina in 2002, he performed in Chapel Hill and around the Piedmont Triangle. In 2019, he performed 40 gigs until Covid wrecked the party.

Liz Sesler Beckman

Liz Sesler-Beckman is a versatile pianist with an extensive background as a performer, music director, and educator. She has performed internationally in Japan, Europe, and the United States, collaborating with renowned musicians such as Tonight Show drummer Ed Shaughnessy, legendary bassist Milt Hinton, saxophonist Don Menza, drummer Alan Dawson, and bassist John Lockwood. She has also accompanied Irish tenor Anthony Kearns.

Liz has been a member of several distinguished jazz groups, including the Stan Kenton Alumni Band and the Baltimore-based Jazz Caravan. She has also served as a clinician at Wellesley, Dickinson, and Allegheny Colleges, as well as in the Baltimore City Schools. Recently Liz has been collaborating in North West Pennsylvania with musicians including David VanAmburg, Kelly Armor, and Phil Papotnik.

Liz was the Associate Director of Music at Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore for over two decades. She also served as Chair of the Fine Arts department at Boys’ Latin School of Maryland. More recently, she directed numerous choral ensembles and musicals during her fifteen years of teaching at Gilman School, including six international tours with the Gilman Chorus.

Eric Heavner

After studying trumpet under Wayne Cameron of the Peabody Conservatory, Eric Heavner played in more than a dozen Baltimore and Washington bands in a range of styles, including rock, funk, blues, jazz and klezmer. He has performed with the Julius Hemphill Big Band, opened for the Beach Boys, and has been a member of Carl Grubbs’ Baltimore Jazz Workshop, Charm City Klezmer, Majestics, Jazz Caravan, Funk Master General, among others.

Mark Osteen

Born and raised in Libby, MT, Mark Osteen began taking piano lessons at age 7, and doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t love music. Both parents were musicians—his father a country guitarist and singer, his mother a gospel vocalist—so melodies surrounded him as a child. He took up the saxophone at age ten, and in high school was honored to be selected as one of two tenor saxophonists in the Montana All-State band. During that period, he also performed in his first rock bands. At the University of Montana, he played baritone and tenor sax in the Jazz Workshop big bands, where he honed his chops and sight-reading skills. For the next seven years he played with multiple rock, r & b, jazz and funk bands based in the Pacific Northwest, logging enough miles to call himself a road warrior.

After moving to Atlanta in the ‘80s, he played with No System, a 1960s tribute band, before relocating to Baltimore in 1988, to become an English professor at Loyola University Maryland, where he still teaches. Since 1991, he has performed and written compositions and arrangements for the Loyola University Maryland Jazz Ensemble and Combo In the mid-nineties, he co-founded Cold Spring Jazz Quartet and has been this mainstream jazz group’s saxophonist and vocalist ever since. CSJQ’s music, including their latest recording, Next of Kin, which features nine of his original compositions, can be streamed or purchased on BandCamp. Most recently, he joined Tidewater Adams, a seven-piece rock, pop and r & b group based in Havre de Grace, Maryland. All in all, Osteen estimates that he has played more than 1500 shows.

Geoff Becker

Geoff Becker gave up the guitar at age eleven after a couple of months of classical lessons, frustrated by having to learn to read music and the Spanish names for his fingers. A year later, after a friend showed him the opening riff to Johnny B. Goode, he took it up again. At fourteen, he discovered Pat Martino and Joe Pass and became fascinated with jazz (he still is). He played in various groups through high school and college, and in 1980, along with a banjo-playing buddy, busked around Europe for three months in a bluegrass duo.  On their return, they formed a band that played NYC-area bars, including the legendary Lone Star Café. Later, while getting an MFA at the University of Iowa, he started Geoff Becker and the Housewreckers, which then became The Blue Tunas, house band for a popular blues jam that ran for years. From 1992-’95, while a Visiting Professor at Emory University, he was active in the Atlanta blues scene. After moving to Baltimore to become a Professor of English at Towson University in 2000 (where he still teaches), he began hosting another blues jam at the Full Moon Saloon in Fells Point.  Since 2014, he has performed at bars and festivals around Maryland with the roots rock band Tumblehome.

Nova Peale

“Nova,” born Novelair Peele, a native of Baltimore, MD, was given the nickname “Chevy Nova” by a co-worker who couldn’t pronounce her birth name. “Nova” has been a lover of music and a singer since she was 6 years old. During her formative years, she credits Aretha Franklin, Cher, Heart, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan and Donna Summer as influences on her vocal style and delivery.

Nova has shared the stage with Roberta Flack, Regina Belle, Phil Perry, The O’Jays and Al Green, in addition to recording projects with the Crystal Waters, Deanna Bogart, Jordan Paige and Blues man Charles “Big Daddy” Stallings.

Ron Tanner

In his twenties, Ron Tanner was a professional drummer on the California honky-tonk and the Nevada casino circuits. He also performed with the all-originals rock band, Indiscreet. He left drumming for grad school in 1984 but returned to music years later, founding Jazz Caravan, a popular, straight-ahead jazz band that has been performing in the Baltimore metro area since 1997. When not drumming, he runs an educational non-profit writer’s retreat.

Dave Hughes

Dave Hughes (bass & vocals) is a 1980 graduate of Berklee College of Music. He has played in several Baltimore-area bands since 1972, including the electric fusion act, Jazz Happens, in the 1990s. Dave was also a member of the celebrated American progressive rock group, Oblivion Sun (formerly Happy The Man) from 2009 until disbandment in 2015. Dave lives in Glyndon, MD, and plays with model trains to his heart’s content.

Chris Warrington

Whether it’s a piano, Fender Rhodes, synthesizer, or a church organ, if it has a keyboard, there’s a good chance that Chris Warrington (vocals & keys) has played it. Chris’s biggest piano influences are Bruce Hornsby, Elton John, and the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel, but he strives to bring an authenticity to whatever the song needs whether it’s Hammond organ or a horn section. Chris lives in Reisterstown, MD, with his wife, Melissa, and works full-time as a music director at a church in Bethesda, MD.

Sean Myers

Originally from Queens NY, Sean Myers (vocals & guitar) is a veteran of the NY and MD band scene. “When I was six,” Sean says, “I stole a broken guitar out of the back of my big brother’s closet and nothing’s been the same since….” Sean is an award-winning songwriter who sings with soul and feeling. His previous band, “Junkyard Blonde,” was a regular player on the Annapolis circuit. The album Sean penned, “Stripped For Parts,” is still being streamed by loyal fans. In his real life, Sean is a master Electrician and runs his own contracting company. In his free time, he builds acoustic guitars in a ridiculously small workshop.

Topher Sisson

Topher Sisson (guitar) is a native son of Baltimore. After studying classical guitar at Towson University for a couple semesters, he was contemplating transferring to the Peabody Conservatory when he attended a Pink Floyd concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion, (Dark Side of the Moon Tour). Of this experience, he says, “When I heard David Gilmour play the guitar solo on ‘Money’ I pretty much decided to move to California and play Rock and Roll instead.”

For 12 years, Topher did studio work and performed with various bands in California’s Bay Area and in Los Angeles. He returned to Baltimore in 1989 and resumed his musical life, playing locally with Angie Miller, Harry Traynham, and others. At the same time, he developed a career as a cabinet maker. He continues to work with wood when not working out with his Stratocaster.