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‘Be proud of where you’re from’

Musician, educator Kris Tiner continues to inspire others

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 30^th, 2023

The trumpet has taken Kris Tiner to concert halls and recording studios across the country and beyond, allowing him to perform his compositions alongside some of the greatest talents in jazz. The trumpet also was Tiner's ticket to college, where he studied with a who's-who of jazz masters and now — as a teacher himself — is one of the most celebrated music educators on the West Coast.

But it wasn't always that way with Tiner and the trumpet. In fact, if he'd had his way as a fourth-grade music novice at Palm Avenue Elementary School in Wasco, he'd now be known as Kris Tiner, saxophonist, or Kris Tiner, drummer. However, he was absent the day the instruments were assigned, so he got what he got — and what he got was the trumpet.

"Actually, my dad suggested it," said Tiner, 45. "He said, 'Take my word for it. If you do the trumpet, you'll get solo parts.' Dad bought me a $100 pawn shop trumpet and gave me my first couple of lessons.

But I hated it, hated to practice. I would forge my mom's signature on my practice slip and I begged her to let me quit. She made me go in and face the band director and take the punishment. And I stuck with it. I was no prodigy at all. It was really hard for me."

And then one day when he was 13, digging through his grandparents' record collection, Tiner found a Louis Armstrong album and learned what the trumpet — in the hands of a gifted musician — could do. But even more powerful than his introduction to Armstrong was the discovery of this strange music whose spontaneity and freedom filled his ears and soul. He had found jazz, and jazz had found him.

"I was really becoming aware of my insecurities at that age, but here was this music, full of life and personality," he said. "It was more than an art form — it was a method of communication. And I was good enough. I wasn't terrible at it. I had a couple of really bad performances of classical trumpet solos. I just butchered the Haydn trumpet concerto, and I told my dad I just wanted to play jazz."

And now, 35 years after picking up that pawnshop instrument, the trumpet is still taking Kris Tiner places. The latest destination: the California State University, Bakersfield Alumni Hall of Fame.

On March 3, the CSUB Alumni Association will honor Tiner, along with Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, U.S. Federal District Judge Jennifer Thurston, and Kern Family Health Chief Executive Officer Emily Duran. The event will take place at the Dore Theatre on campus and is the culmination of homecoming festivities at the university.

"If I hadn't had music, I wouldn't have had confidence that I had something to say that anybody was going to pay attention to," Tiner said. "It's kind of a small-town syndrome, too: 'I'm nobody from no place and nobody is going to listen to what I have to say.' … But on a deeper level, what we're doing when we teach the arts is give kids confidence to know who they are and to have the courage to express that and to understand they're a viable part of a bigger community. Kids from small communities need that."

Doug Davis, who taught music at CSUB for years, spotted the talented young trumpet player when Tiner was still a student at Wasco High and eventually recruited him to the university. The two are still friends and musical collaborators.

"I put on one of Kris' recordings just the other day, and I just feel like there's a magic surrounding him. And, hey, that Bakersfield can share in that? What a gift."

Kris Tiner, far right, with the Bakersfield College Jazz Combo, from left: Michael Reyes, Jonathan Diaz, Mason Heath, Jacob Buettner, Salvador Zarraga, Luis Jaimes and Marcos Gonzalez.

'Kris really fights for his students'

A look at Tiner's exhaustive resume in music makes one thing clear: He is not stingy with his gift.

The prolific musician and composer has recorded more than 80 albums of original music, his compositions have received international media attention and radio airplay and his trumpet can be heard on television and the scores of several motion pictures.

He also is a founding and current member of a number of groups: the Empty Cage Quartet, Tin/Bag, Kris Tiner Trio, Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet, Vidya Trio, Not Twice and Tone Drift Trio. (For a sample of his music, visit his website here.)

As an educator, his leadership extends beyond his role as chair of the Department of Performing Arts and professor of music at Bakersfield College.

A board member of the Bakersfield Jazz Workshop, Tiner works to raise money for scholarships and lends his expertise to the nonprofit music organization while training hundreds of young musicians each year. He also plays trumpet with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra and serves as a member of several other music organizations.

"Kris really fights for his students, providing them opportunities and constantly looking for ways to make Bakersfield culture richer," said Kim Tiner, who will celebrate 20 years of marriage with her husband in June. "I think it's so easy for somebody that is given so many accolades to become self-important, but he just takes all of that and asks, 'What can I do for my students?' He's tireless in his motivation to not only give his students every opportunity he can, but the community of Bakersfield. It's close to his heart."

As busy as his life is, it doesn't compare to the chaotic schedule Tiner kept as a college student and young professional, who took his trumpet on tours all over the country and into classrooms in Kern County and Los Angeles as an adjunct instructor, while courting — and eventually marrying — Kim and starting a family.

"I was in a different town almost every day. I felt like I lived in my car for 15 or 20 years. That was a profound change in my life when I was hired at BC and could drop a lot of that stuff. It does get to the point of just being exhausting, being on the road all the time. I've developed a healthy sense of road rage," he said with a laugh. "I'm very selective about the things I do commit to these days."

No. 1 on that long list of professional commitments: his students.

Tiner started at BC in an adjunct capacity not long after graduating with his master's degree from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. He ran the jazz ensemble and taught classes for many years before the college announced an ambitious renovation of the performing arts complex. Sonya Christian, who was then the president of BC and is now the chancellor of the Kern Community College District, made it clear that Bakersfield College was committed to arts education, Tiner said.

"When that reopened, Sonya really sent the message that she wanted to build a world-class performing arts program to put in this space," he said. "It's a gift to the community to have that building."

In 2017, Tiner joined BC full-time as a professor of music and director of jazz studies and the program expanded, adding several faculty members and courses. In 2021, he became the chair of the Department of Performing Arts. Active music majors peaked at about 85 in 2019 but declined during the height of the pandemic, he said.

"We've built it back up this semester to almost 70, and we're nearly back to pre-pandemic levels," he said.

Abigail Wilson, a saxophonist, studied music at BC from 2018 to 2020 and credits Tiner with preparing her so thoroughly during her time as a Renegade that when she transferred to California State University, Los Angeles, she was qualified far beyond the university level.

"At Cal State LA, students are students and professionals are professionals," she said. "But with Kris, you're a professional as soon as you step into the classroom."

Wilson calls Tiner a "lifetime mentor that will always have influence in my life — not just as a musician but as a person."

"He's super-unique in a way where he will get you to understand things, even though you don't understand it in the moment," she said. "He would teach us a concept in class and it wouldn't click and then later, you're like, 'Oh, OK.' I used to take a notebook and journal and write down things he was saying. He had a philosophical view of music that translated into the practicality of music as well."

Kris Tiner as a toddler. The gifted musician grew up in Wasco and lived in the same house — right down the street from where his dad grew up — until he left for college.

The Tiner family, from left: Wayne Tiner, Amanda Tiner Sproul, Kris Tiner and Sandy Tiner.

'I was the only kid in Wasco interested in Jazz'

Nearly from the start of his life in the arts, Tiner has been the protege of one extraordinary educator after another — mentors who encouraged, coaxed and inspired him.

However, his first teacher was his dad, who was a drum major in high school, played the trombone and picked out tunes on the guitar after work. He also was a gifted sculptor, using his skill as a welder and machinist to create stunning abstract works out of iron.

"Dad went to BC and took a few classes but realized it wasn't for him. He always said that with regret," said Tiner of his father, Wayne, who died in 2011. "He worked on cars and that's what he did until he died. My dad didn't really show me anything about fixing cars but anything I wanted to know about music, he would help me. He didn't want me to get stuck like he was."

Tiner grew up in a "classic small-town nuclear family," with his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins nearby. Both of Tiner's grandfathers came to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl and raised their families to respect hard work and self-sufficiency.

"If something's broken, you fix it," he said. "My grandfather worked as a head bus driver and technician, and one of the ways he got the job is he found the manual, read through it and fixed the bus."

Tiner, too, had a knack for improvisation. In a small town like Wasco, it was a matter of survival.

"Everything closes up at 7 p.m., so we're just running around town to create things to do to have fun, and we managed to get into a lot of weird situations and things we should have been disciplined for. But growing up in a small town, you have to learn to improvise to keep yourself from going crazy," he said.

The arts — and his teachers in Wasco — certainly helped. He credits longtime art teacher Art Sherwyn with "opening me up to all these ideas about creativity," as he explored his first love as a visual artist.

And band director Rob Martens helped develop his jazz knowledge and turned him on to Miles Davis.

"I was the only kid in Wasco interested in jazz at all, from seventh grade on," Tiner said. "It was a solitary journey until Doug contacted me."

Martens had asked Davis to come out and hear the talented junior at Wasco High.

"As I recall initially, I said let's just go into the band room and maybe play a little," Davis said. "And as soon as I started playing — and it wasn't anything in particular, just kind of anything he wanted to play — it was obvious that he was a very gifted musician. There already was a lot of nuance and musicality that existed when I met him. I had an opening in my jazz band and I invited to come to the jazz ensemble rehearsals."

Tiner knew that Davis and the other professors at CSUB, like trumpet instructor Charles Brady, would give him a world-class education. Coupled with the affordability of a CSUB degree, the decision to stay in Kern County for his undergraduate education was easy.

During Tiner's time at CSUB, the music program was filled with rising stars, including Jim Scully, Kyle Burnham, Dennis Hamm, Jenny Maybee, James Dethlefson and Brian Palla, to name a few. Along with Tiner, many would go on to teach at the college level, and all continue to make music, often with one another.

"That group really kind of established its own standard of excellence. They all just pushed each other," said Davis, whom Tiner considers one of his most influential mentors.

"Getting to know Doug, I thought, here's a person who writes incredible music and teaches us music theory and studies scores and meets with students and goes home and practices some more. I was watching him and thinking this is really a lifestyle I could see myself being incredibly happy with, staying in this environment where I'm getting to work with students are being inspired by the things I was inspired by at that age."

But first, Tiner would head to Cal Arts in Valencia with his bachelor of arts degree in trumpet performance and study with Wadada Leo Smith, a legend of the 1960s avant-garde music scene. He also worked with famed violinist Leroy Jenkins and genre-disrupting bassist Charlie Haden, among many other influential names in modern jazz.

"Cal Arts is what connected me from Bakersfield to everything I've done afterward," he said. "It gave me a window into a national scene. You go to grad school and then people filter back to where they're from and then suddenly I have contacts who are musicians all over the world. I went down there to Cal Arts and did my best, busted my butt and played with as many people as possible and I took classes in jazz and African music, Indonesian music, Indian music, classical music, electronic music, music technology, recording technology — at least 20 units every semester. It's still paying off. Most of the musical projects I'm involved with now still have something to do with Cal Arts."

Kris Tiner with his family. From left: Daughter Aline, wife Kim, Tiner and daughter Elise. Both girls inherited their dad’s musical talent, with Aline playing cello and Elise playing saxophone.

‘If something’s broken and you can fix it, fix it’

In many ways, Tiner never really left Bakersfield, even while in grad school. He kept a room here while he lived in the dorms at Cal Arts for two reasons: "I felt it was really important to stay rooted in place," and he had started dating the woman he would eventually marry, who began her teaching career in Oildale just after graduating from CSUB and now serves a classroom of third-graders at Seibert Elementary.

The two met on a blind double date with Kim's brother and a mutual friend.

"It was just as awkward as you can imagine," Tiner said. "We didn't get to know each other that much because of that. But I called her back in a week and we decided to go out just the two of us."

For Kim, the connection was almost immediate.

"Kris is a quiet person, but he's not shy. I'm a shy person, but I'm not quiet. So I think we fuse well together in our personalities. As far as what has held us together, it's common faith, similar childhood backgrounds, both of our families value similar things, so things were easy in that regard."

"The first thing I noticed about her was her amazing smile," Tiner said. "She was just a really joyful, caring person. It was kind of an opposites-attract scenario. She played flute in band in junior high but she's not really an artist or musician."

"But I can make a mean Excel chart," his wife said with a laugh.

The two were married in 2003, a month after Tiner graduated from Cal Arts with a performer/composer master of fine arts degree. Four years later, Alina Rose was born and her sister, Elise Lily, followed in 2009.

Both girls followed their dad into music, though Alina, who plays the cello, has decided to focus on visual art and other activities. Elise, meanwhile, is living out her dad's fourth-grade dream. She had her pick of instruments, courtesy of Tiner's sister, Amanda Sproul, the band director at Stockdale High, who let her niece try everything from tuba to clarinet before making her decision.

"I said, 'Let's try the saxophone because then you could do jazz band and everything else,' and so we got out the alto saxophone and she just right away got the perfect tone," Tiner said. "And I never got the chance to do that, so it's kind of poetic justice."

The girls will join their parents at the CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame celebration in March, where they will see the full expression of the community's respect and affection for their father. But first Tiner will be honored with the Paul A. Shaghoian Jazz Educator Award from the California Music Educators Association in February.

Tiner said that he appreciates the recognition and hopes that it helps dispel the prejudice he has experienced from outsiders about Bakersfield's inaccurate reputation as a city that does not respect the arts or culture. He and his wife have chosen to raise their children where they grew up because it's home and because they want to do all they can to expand the arts and culture to students.

"It connects me with my parents and grandparents and the ethos that if something's broken and you can fix it, fix it," he said. "I tell my students to be proud of where you're from and be proud of who you are."