Bi-coastal duo of California trumpeter Kris Tiner and New York guitarist Mike Baggetta deals with a music that is spare, ethereal, and highly exploratory, “clearly cut from cloth that hasn’t been designed yet…” (–Improvijazzation Nation).
Link to home page : http://www.kristiner.com/tinbag.html
Biography:
“Trumpeter Kris Tiner can turn barbed wire to beauty…”
–Greg Burk, LA WEEKLY
“Tiner in particular is a really compelling voice, blending the timbral resourcefulness of
Smoker or Wadada with the focused linear constructions of, say, Booker Little.”
–Jason Bivins, CADENCE MAGAZINE
“Tiner plays through a spectrum of tones and approaches…”
–Rex Butters, ALL ABOUT JAZZ LOS ANGELES
“Tiner’s trumpet and flugelhorn work is both conversational and eliptical,
much like Bill Dixon’s in its unhurried examination of space.”
–Larry Nai, CADENCE MAGAZINE
“Extraordinarily inventive… suggesting still-untapped potentials in Miles Davis’s legacy –
it’s as if Tiner has plumbed the most daring, piercing moments in Davis’s music to propose
a boldface musical language utterly different from the usual stylized fragility of Miles disciples.”
–Nate Dorward, SIGNAL TO NOISE
“Tiner’s timbre is brassy and full, capable of tranquility, but prone to pugnacious elation…”
–Troy Collins, CADENCE MAGAZINE
bio:
KRIS TINER (b. 1977) is active on the West Coast jazz and creative music scene as a trumpet player, composer, and improviser. His music has been described as “extraordinarily inventive” by Signal to Noise magazine; Cadence magazine calls him “a really compelling voice,” and LA Weekly jazz critic Greg Burk claims, “Trumpeter Kris Tiner can turn barbed wire to beauty.” Kris has toured and performed his own music at concert venues and festivals throughout North America and in West Africa, with highlights including The Kennedy Center (Washington D.C.), Line Space Line Festival of Improvised Music (Los Angeles), CalArts Creative Music Festival, Mateel Summer Arts & Music Festival, Ventura New Music Festival, Bakersfield Jazz Festival, Trummerflora Spring Reverb Festival (San Diego), Mat Bevel Institute (Tucson), LA County Museum of Art, The Jazz Bakery (Los Angeles), CBGB (New York), The Knitting Factory (Hollywood), The Jazzschool (Berkeley), 1067 Granville (Vancouver B.C.), Zeitgeist Gallery (Boston), Bowery Poetry Club (New York), High Mayhem (Santa Fe), Polestar Gallery (Seattle), The Goethe Institut (Los Angeles), REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall, sound. at the Schindler House, The Outpost Creative Soundspace Festival (Albuquerque), so.cal.sonic (Long Beach), and Earjam.
Kris has performed on over 30 recordings and his own works have been released on the pfMENTUM, Nine Winds, and Evander Music labels. He has written and recorded music for radio, television, and motion picture scores, and his trumpet playing has been heard on MTV and Comedy Central. His recordings are regularly featured on jazz radio stations throughout the world. Kris has been the recipient of awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE), and the Kennedy Center’s Jazz Ahead program. His music has received praise in Cadence Magazine, Signal to Noise, All About Jazz, One Final Note, The Wire (UK), The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Tucson Weekly, Time Out New York, The Santa Fe Reporter, The Stranger (Seattle), Jazz Hot (France), Improjazz Magazine (France), Paris Transatlantic, Bad Alchemy (Germany), Tarkus Magazine (Norway), Kathodik (Italy), and Gonzo Circus (Belgium), among others.
His primary musical project is the Empty Cage Quartet (formerly MTKJ Quartet), a collaborative new jazz ensemble that has been hailed in the jazz press as being “one of the most powerful and appealing jazz units currently active” (–All About Jazz). Formed in 2002, the quartet features Tiner on trumpet and flugelhorn along with saxophonist Jason Mears, bassist Ivan Johnson and percussionist Paul Kikuchi. Over the course of five albums and a number of lengthy tours the group has explored new ways to integrate original modular compositions with controlled improvisation as well as groove functions from all over the globe. Critic Rex Butters of the Jazz Journalists Association selected Day of the Race, their second CD on Nine Winds Records, as one of the top 10 jazz albums of 2005.
Tiner’s other major project is TIN/BAG, a duo collaboration with New York guitarist Mike Baggetta which deals with a music that is spare, ethereal, and highly exploratory, “clearly cut from cloth that hasn’t been designed yet…” (–Improvijazzation Nation). In 2005 their debut CD There, Just As You Look For It (pfMENTUM CD025) was met with enthusiastic reviews as it opened the way for several national tours. Their recent album And Begin Again (Evander Music Em 044) is a more compositionally oriented release that features several new duos alongside two extended compositions for quartet which feature virtuoso clarinetist Brian Walsh and rising jazz percussionist Harris Eisenstadt.
Kris is also a member of the electro-acoustic improvisation trio The Unmentionables, with guitarist Noah Phillips and percussionist Nathan Hubbard. He is a founding member of the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet and he performs regularly with the Industrial Jazz Group, Vinny Golia’s Jazz for Models and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, the Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, and Steuart Liebig’s Meninas Quartet. In addition to these ongoing projects he has performed and/or recorded with a broad range of creative musicians including Wadada Leo Smith, Gerry Hemingway, G.E. Stinson, Kraig Grady, Lukas Ligeti, Ken Filiano, Phillip Greenlief, Mary Oliver, Michael Vlatkovich, Nels Cline, Bill Horvitz, Toshi Makihara, Pete Christlieb, Brad Dutz, Kim Richmond, Mike Lee, Harris Eisenstadt’s Ahimsa Orchestra, the Joe LaBarbera Quintet, Create (!), Mento Buru, The Sons of the San Joaquin, the Tri-Axium West Large Ensemble (performing the music of Anthony Braxton), Nathan Hubbard’s Skeleton Key Orchestra, the Kreative Orchestra of Los Angeles (KOLA), and the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra. Kris has premiered new works by composers Becky Allen, hans w. koch, Leroy Jenkins, Wayne Peet, Doug Davis, Travis Just, Devin Maxwell, and Andrew Durkin. His interest in interdisciplinary connections has led to collaborations with filmmakers Allen Glass and Maryam Kashani, choreographers Miyuki Kobayashi and Wan-Chen Chang, and visual artists Art Sherwyn and Kio Griffith, as well as projects involving animation, poetry and spoken word.
Originally from Wasco, California, Kris holds an MFA in African-American Improvisational Music from California Institute of the Arts where he studied composition with AACM masters Wadada Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins, improvisation with Vinny Golia and Charlie Haden, and trumpet with Edward Carroll. He also holds a BA in Music from CSU Bakersfield, where his teachers included composer Doug Davis and the legendary trumpeter Charles Brady. Kris has studied and performed in a wide variety of classical, jazz, and popular styles as well as traditional music from Latin America, West Africa, Indonesia, and North India. He has made extensive research into world improvisational music systems from which he has formulated a unique methodology for teaching creative melodic improvisation. Kris has lectured on both music and visual art, and currently directs the jazz program at Bakersfield College. He has taught at CSU Bakersfield, College of the Canyons, Taft College, and the Academy of Creative Education in Los Angeles, and has been a guest lecturer/clinician at California Institute of the Arts and The Oakwood School as well as at numerous high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools throughout Southern California. Also active as a concert organizer, Kris co-founded and curated the Okiro Creative and Experimental Arts Series in Hollywood from 2002-03 and currently curates a jazz and new music concert series at Metro Galleries in Bakersfield. He lives in Bakersfield with his wife, baby daughter, and dog, and publishes a blog entitled Stop the Play and Watch the Audience.
bio:
MIKE BAGGETTA: Guitarist, composer and educator Mike Baggetta is originally from the town of Agawam in Western Massachusetts. Inspired by his father, he began playing the guitar while in high school after previously studying the violin and trombone. At that time, Mike studied with guitarist Tom Dempsey via audio tape lessons through the mail, continuously performed with the All-State Jazz Ensemble, and received many awards from the International Association of Jazz Educators and the Berklee College of Music. Mike went on to study music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree with high academic honors, and Master of Music degree in Jazz Studies. His talents have also been recognized through a scholarship from the New Jersey Jazz Society, an invitation to participate in Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency program at the Kennedy Center and as a finalist in the Fish Middleton Jazz Scholarship competition.
Mike is in demand as a sideman, composer and instructor, as well as leading the Mike Baggetta Quartet and co-leading the duo TIN/BAG with Los Angeles trumpeter Kris Tiner, which has recorded two highly acclaimed CDs and toured throughout the United States. In addition, he has had the pleasure of performing and/or recording with Tom Harrell, Bucky Pizzarelli, Ruth Brown, Conrad Herwig, Tony Reedus, Ralph Bowen, and violinist Christian Howes. Mike has also been a featured performer with Randy James’ Danceworks in the premiere of Looking East, and has composed a suite for solo prepared guitar based on poems by Laurie Sheck, which had its premiere at the New Gallery Concert Series in Boston, MA.
Mike Baggetta’s musical growth has been insightfully guided by the teachers whom he has sought out. Among them have been Ted Dunbar, Vic Juris, Ralph Bowen, Stanley Cowell, and Conrad Herwig. He also cites masterclasses with guitarist and NEA Jazz Master Jim Hall as being particularly insightful. Mike is an endorser for Evans Custom Amplifiers and currently lives in New York City.