KRIS TINER is a California-based trumpet player, composer, and improviser. Featured on NPR Music as one of a handful of new trumpet voices impacting modern music, his playing has been described as “extraordinarily inventive” in Signal to Noise Magazine, and the LA Weekly claims “Trumpeter Kris Tiner can turn barbed wire to beauty.” His music has been performed on five continents, his 50+ recordings have been enthusiastically reviewed in the international jazz press, and he has performance credits on MTV, NBC, PBS and Comedy Central. Tiner has been recognized with awards from ASCAP, IAJE, the American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America, Montalvo Arts Center, and the 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 also performs regularly with the Industrial Jazz Group, Chris Schlarb’s Psychic Temple, pianist Cathlene Pineda, the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet and the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra. He holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in Music from CSU Bakersfield. He directs the Jazz Program at Bakersfield College, and serves as the trumpet instructor both at BC and at CSU Bakersfield. He has also taught at CalArts, Taft College, and the Academy of Creative Education in Los Angeles. Tiner is the founder of Epigraph Records, an independent label dedicated to the documentation of new creative music recorded in Bakersfield.