The Bakersfield College Department of Performing Arts will present a Fireside Jazz concert featuring the music of Sun Ra on Thursday, November 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Fireside Room at the BC Campus Center. Admission to this event is $8 general and $5 for students, staff, and seniors. Tickets are available at the door.
The composer/pianist/bandleader Herman “Sonny” Blount (1914-1993), widely known as Sun Ra, was recognized for his pioneering musical experimentation, outer-space philosophy (he claimed to be from the planet Saturn), outrageous costumes and the earliest incorporation of electronic instruments in jazz. His music both encapsulated and influenced the popular music of the twentieth century, from swing-era big band roots through bebop, avant-garde jazz, even funk and disco. Artists ranging from John Coltrane to MC5 to George Clinton all professed a deep connection with Ra’s music.
Director Kris Tiner and the Bakersfield College Jazz Ensemble have prepared a dozen classic Sun Ra compositions for their performance, ranging from his very first recording session in 1956 to his “postmodern” Arkestra of the 1980s.
This Sunday will be the last Epigraph Records-sponsored concert of the year at Metro Galleries. Superb Sacramento guitarist Ross Hammond is bringing his trio (featuring Steuart Liebig on bass and Trevor Anderies on drums), and I’ll play in the opening set with the trio version of my new trumpet-synth project Not Twice (check here for a recap of our San Francisco performance back in August). Both sets will be recorded live. More info at this link.
Here’s a preview of the music I’ve written for our set:
Had a nice weekend in New York to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Empty Cage Quartet, and our new LP. The videos below (courtesy of our friend Kevin Reilly) contain our entire performance at Douglass Street Music Collective in Brooklyn. Video from our concert at The Stone should be ready soon…
New review of RITUAL INSCRIPTION in the October issue of the New York City Jazz Record:
“There’s something different happening in Bakersfield since the glory days of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. That at least is what would be suggested by the inaugural release from Epigraph Records…”
“Empty Cage Quartet, a tight-knit West Coast avant-jazz outfit including trumpeter Kris Tiner, reedist Jason Mears,bassist Ivan Johnson and drummer Paul Kikuchi, boasts an admirably wide dynamic range, encompassing funkyblare and chamber-style intimacy. This week the group plays two local gigs in support of a new limited-edition, self-titled LP on Prefecture Music. Sharing the bill on Oct 6 are the trios Cacaw and Killer Kate.” –TIME OUT NEW YORK
The new album was recorded at Jack Straw in Seattle early last year, and includes many of the tunes we’ve been playing on our live gigs over the past couple of years. The vinyl is limited to 300 copies, or you can download the digital album in whatever format you prefer, and you can name your price. Check the embed below to listen and purchase:
On Saturday night we’ll be playing a set at Douglass Street Music Collective in Gowanus, Brooklyn, sharing the bill with CaCaw and Killer Kate. Click here for details. Sunday night is the official LP release show at The Stone, on Manhattan’s lower east side. Great to be back at this world-class venue for creative music. Click here for details.
Please take a minute to check out hibari, an ongoing aid project for earthquake victims in northeastern Japan. It’s now in it’s 43rd week featuring new music weekly by 100 contemporary composers.
This week they are featuring a flute/piano duet I composed earlier in the summer, BEAUTIFULLY and impeccably performed by Reiko Manabe and Kaori Ohsuga. Scroll down for a reproduction of the score.
You can download the full seven minute performance by donating $5 or more. My piece will be available for the next seven days.
Kris Tiner – trumpet, compositions Phillip Greenlief – tenor saxophone Motoko Honda – keyboard and electronics Jordan Aguirre – keyboard and electronics Andrew Koeth – keyboard and electronics Allen D. Glass – 16mm film projection
for emptiness is a video collaboration with Parisian sculptor/media artist Stéphane Thidet, completed during our residency at Montalvo Arts Center and filmed at Castle Rock State Park outside Saratoga, California. The context, setting, and production were created and conceptualized by Stéphane, the music is my own solo trumpet improvisation.
Some images above from the first week of my three-week residency at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA. It’s been a productive time — while doing my best to soak in the glorious stillness and natural beauty of this area, I’ve finished several composition projects that will be featured at two performances in San Francisco next week.
One is a set of variations on Ornette Coleman’s “Sadness” – no doubt one of his most poignant and alluring melodies – which will be performed on August 2 at The Luggage Store Gallery with a new ensemble I’m calling Not Twice, featuring Phillip Greenlief on saxophones, myself on trumpet, and Motoko Honda, Jordan Aguirre, and Andrew Koeth on keyboards and electronics. We will be accompanying the silent 16mm film projections of Los Angeles film artist Allen D. Glass.
Another project is a long overdue tribute to my former composition teacher and mentor Leroy Jenkins, who left this world in 2007. I’ll be playing this and several other recent compositions with my new trio that includes bassist Scott Walton and drummer Donald Robinson at the SIMM Series on August 5.
Kris Tiner is a California-based trumpet player, composer, and improviser. Featured on NPR Music as one of five new trumpet voices impacting modern music, he has been described as “extraordinarily inventive” (–Signal to Noise), and LA Weekly jazz critic Greg Burk claims, “Trumpeter Kris Tiner can turn barbed wire to beauty.” Tiner’s compositions explore connections between improvisational world music traditions and systemic compositional practices, blending deep jazz roots with references to many diverse streams of contemporary and experimental music. His music has been performed on five continents, his 40+ recordings have been enthusiastically reviewed in the international jazz press, and he has been recognized with awards from ASCAP, the American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, the International Association for Jazz Education, Montalvo Arts Center, and the John F. Kennedy Center. He is a member of the acclaimed Empty Cage Quartet, and he collaborates with New York guitarist Mike Baggetta in the duo Tin/Bag. Tiner has performed with the Industrial Jazz Group, Vinny Golia, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Donald Robinson, Nels Cline, Ken Filiano, Kraig Grady, Tatsuya Nakatani, Taylor Ho Bynum, G.E. Stinson, Chris Schlarb, Motoko Honda, Harris Eisenstadt, Sara Schoenbeck, and Lukas Ligeti. Tiner holds an MFA in African-American Improvisational Music from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in Music from California State University, Bakersfield. He has lectured on both music and visual art, and currently teaches courses in jazz and American popular music at Bakersfield College. He recently founded Epigraph Records, an independent label dedicated to the documentation of new creative music recorded live in Bakersfield.
Bassist and pianist Scott Walton‘s interests cut across musical genres. He has collaborated with poets, dancers, performance artists, filmmakers, and multimedia artists, and is featured on recent CD releases with the Vinny Golia Quintet (One, Three, Two), Cosmologic (Syntaxis), O’Keefe, Stanyek, Walton, Whitehead (Tunnel), and Jeff Kaiser (17 Themes for Ockodektet). As a pianist Walton is currently performing an improvisationally inspired interpretation of Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata. As a bassist he has recorded with George Lewis, Bobby Bradford, Anthony Davis, and Carmell Jones, and has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, John Carter, J.D. Parran, Gerry Hemingway, Quincy Troupe, Ray Anderson, John Abercrombie, Phillip Gelb, Davey Williams, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Clifford Jordan, Al Cohn, Buddy Tate, and Frank Wess, among others. He has recorded on the Soul Note, Nine Winds, Jazz’halo, Circumvention, pfMentum, Koch, Centaur, Albany, and Revelation labels.
Described as a “percussive dervish” (Coda), Donald Robinson is a technical master of the drums. He is a stalwart of the of San Francisco bay area avant-garde jazz scene, playing and recording with many of the area’s improvisational players, from saxophonists John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi and Larry Ochs to koto player Miya Masaoka and pianist Matthew Goodheart, and with prominent visitors like Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, trumpeter Raphe Malik and Canadian pianist Paul Plimley. Much of this work has featured the combination of Robinson and bassist Lisle Ellis as rhythm section: ‘the best bass-drums tag team on the scene’ (Jazz Times). His longest musical association, dating from the 1970’s, was with the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1953, Robinson first studied classical percussion at the New England Conservatory. During the early 1970’s he served his musical apprenticeship in the jazz world of Paris, studying with Kenny Clarke and playing with Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake and Bobby Few among many others. He first played with Spearman as a duet partner during this period in Paris, an association which continued through various configurations and many recordings until the saxophonist’s death in 1998. Robinson is currently playing in many configurations with a broad range of musicians throughout Europe and the US.
