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Kris Tiner

About Me

KRIS TINER, trumpeter, composer, improviser, and visual artist, is active on the West Coast jazz and creative music scene with his own ensembles which include the Tiner/ Phillips/Schoenbeck Trio (a trumpet-bassoon-electric guitar ensemble which performs original and commissioned works), the Kris Tiner Quintet (original jazz music), and the MTKJ Quartet (original modular compositions and improvisation). Originally from Wasco, California, he holds an MFA in African-American Improvisational Music from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in music from CSU Bakersfield, and has studied with Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Vinny Golia, Charlie Haden, Doug Davis, Jimmy Owens, Edward Carroll, John Fumo, and Charles Brady. In 2001 Kris was one of 24 musicians worldwide selected to participate in Betty Carter's Jazz Ahead residency program for promising young jazz musicians at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Kris has performed in concert with Terence Blanchard, Wadada Leo Smith, Vinny Golia, Leroy Jenkins, Gerry Hemingway, Michael Vlatkovich, Harris Eisenstadt, the Joe LaBarbera Quintet, Conte Candoli, Pete Christlieb, The Industrial Jazz Group, KOLA (Kreative Orchestra of Los Angeles), Brad Dutz's Nine Gardeners Named Ned, The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, and the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet. Kris has both studied and performed a variety of musics from around the globe, including West African music, Javanese and Balinese gamelan, North Indian music, jazz, swing, rock and funk, salsa and latin music, Western classical music and contemporary composition, experimental, improvisational and creative music. He has also worked on numerous collaborative and interdisciplinary projects involving dance, poetry and spoken word, visual art, film, and animation, and has written and performed music for TV, radio, and film (his trumpet can be heard on the theme song to the New Tom Green Show on MTV). Kris has recorded on the pfMENTUM, Tonicism Records, MoonSka, and Capitol Records labels, and has performed his own music throughout the U.S. and in Canada and West Africa. An active teacher as well, he has taught classes in both music and visual art, and has developed a system for teaching creative melodic improvisation which he is compiling into a method book of studies. Kris is also a co-founder and curator of the monthly OKIRO Creative and Experimental Arts Series at Rocco in Hollywood.

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