More info at JeffKaiser.com
Jeff Kaiser is a trumpet player, composer, and conductor living in La Jolla, California.
While maintaining an active professional career, he is also a PhD student at the University of California, San Diego in Critical Studies and Experimental Practices . Jeff also holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition from Westmont College and a Master of Music in Choral and Orchestral Conducting from Azusa Pacific University.
Jeff has played professionally with many different groups and individuals on television, film, radio, and in concert halls throughout the United States and abroad. Artists he has played with include Eugene Chadbourne, Michael Vlatkovich, Brad Dutz, Jim Connolly, The Motor Totemist Guild, Headless Household, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, The Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet, The Kreative Orchestra of Los Angeles, as well as his own ensembles including his large group The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, The Choir Boys (with Andrew Pask), and his duo with Tom McNalley (ZUGZWANG) which played at the Festival of New Trumpet (FONT) in New York. Television trumpet performance credits include the HBO series Deadwood. Recent film performances include The Cave.
He is the recipient of numerous grants, honors and awards. An active member of the artist community in Ventura, California before moving to La Jolla, he is a fourteen-time recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Ventura (beginning in 1990) and a three-time recipient of the Forum of the Arts Grant administered by the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. He is also the recipient of eight ASCAP Plus Awards. In addition to the awards, he has received critical praise in the Los Angeles Times, Cadence Magazine, The Wire, Signal-to-Noise, L.A. Weekly and numerous other print and web publications throughout the world.
He is also the founder and owner of the pfMENTUM record label and Angry Vegan Records , both currently growing stronger and adding to their catalogs regularly.
An active promoter of creative music, he is the founder and co-director of the now defunct Ventura New Music Concert Series (internationally acclaimed concert series for seventeen years featuring artists from around the world), numerous other concerts and events, founder and co-editor of the NewCreativeMusic.com, and founding editor of the upcoming WestCoastCreativeMusic.com.
He has released numerous CDs as leader/co-leader and has also appeared on CDs by Headless Household, The Motor Totemist Guild, Eugene Chadbourne, The Gove County Philharmonic, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, and others. He did the musical score and sound effects for the award-winning independent film by Ted Mills, Nowhereland. Nowhereland has been featured at film festivals in Iceland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, England, Canada and festivals throughout the United States. The composition Templum-Tempus, on his CD Ganz Andere, was a runner-up in the PALMARES du 26e Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique, Bourges, France - 1999.
He has been a private teacher since graduating from college. He has taught master classes, coached brass, led seminars, and been a guest lecturer at numerous universities, colleges, high schools, and middle schools including visiting artist/lecturer positions at Roosevelt University (Chicago, Illinois), Westmont College (Santa Barbara, CA), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) and California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA). He has taught workshops at various other locations including the Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA).
He is a former music director for the Ojai Camerata. He is one of the founding (and current) members of the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet. He is a published writer on music and art, with an essay about experimental music in an upcoming book by the Hertz-Lion Foundation. He is a member of the International Trumpet Guild, The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.