About

Jeff Kaiser is a trumpet player, composer, conductor, media technologist, and scholar. Classically trained as a trumpet player and composer, Kaiser now takes an integrative, systemic view that involves his traditional instrument, emergent technology (in the form of custom interactive/generative software and hardware interfaces), space, and audience: all being critical and integral participants in his dynamic and adventurous performances. He gains inspiration and ideas from the rich history of experimental improvisation and composition, cognitive science, and the vast timbral and formal affordances provided by combining traditional instruments with new and repurposed technologies. The roots of his music are firmly in the experimental traditions within jazz, improvisation, and Western art music practices. Kaiser considers his art audio-centric, but he also works with live video, tracking, and interactive and generative technologies.

Embracing the idea of being an artist/technologist/scholar, Kaiser earned a PhD in Integrative Studies (music) from the University of California San Diego and his output falls into these three areas—creative, technological, scholarly—with each area informing the other. He is driven by a strong desire to combine the artistic exploration of ideas, concepts, and practices on the creation and production of music, with what scholar, professor, and ethnomusicologist Timothy Rice refers to as “…word-based, reasoned discourse about music.” In doing this, Kaiser acknowledges a relationship that has long existed between artists, technologists, and the scholarly/intellectual pursuits; and recognizes that these domains enrich and inform each other. Such interdisciplinary work also provides frameworks that encourage innovation and multiple ways of knowing, examining, communicating, creating, and producing sonic art across genres, styles with differing creative, technological, and scholarly outcomes. As an example of this interplay, his work as an ethnomusicologist researching musicians who improvise with new technologies led to his developing a specific definition of improvisation; this definition then led to his development of a software-based machine-improvisation algorithm informed by that definition; and this algorithm is now used in his software for creative projects from solo works to commissioned compositions.

As an artist/technologist/scholar Kaiser maintains a robust and active agenda in all three areas. He has performed concerts, given master classes, and presented his research in Austria, China, England, Estonia, Germany, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and throughout the United States. Even during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, Kaiser continued to perform and present at festivals and universities in the US and abroad remotely from his personal studio.

In addition, Kaiser is a tireless promoter of creative and experimental music:

He was the founder and director of the critically acclaimed pfMENTUM music label (1999-2022). pfMENTUM released around 150 full-length recordings (CDs, LPs, DVDs, digital) featuring over 700 musicians, artists, engineers, poets, and more. pfMENTUM’s focus was on music that fell between-the-cracks of genres, from the avant-blues of The Mentones, free-jazz/rock of pianist/organist Wayne Peet (with Nels Cline and G.E. Stinson), experimental vocalist Bonnie Barnett, electro-acoustic experimentation, and Kaiser's own projects from his large ensemble (with and without choir), electro-acoustic duos, trios and more.

Kaiser was the founder and director of the internationally-acclaimed Ventura New Music Concert Series (1990-2007) featuring a combination of regional, national, and international creative artists.

He is the co-founding director and currently the main coordinating director for MOXsonic (the yearly Missouri Experimental Sonic Arts Festival, 2018-present). MOXsonic features music performances with a focus on interactive technology, gaining critical praise from MIT’s Computer Music Journal, among others.

Kaiser has also served as a consultant with administrators and directors with other festivals, concerts, series, and events.

In his spare time, he likes to work on his 1966 Porsche 912.

Musician

Jeff Kaiser’s work as a trumpet player, electronic musician, composer, conductor, and more, is documented on over sixty full-length recordings including releases on Clean Feed Records (Portugal), Cuneiform Records (US), Leo Records (UK), Mother Brain Records (US), NineWinds (US), Orenda Records(US), Sinkro Records (Spain) and his own label, pfMENTUM, and more.

Kaiser has maintained an active international career, performing at prestigious events such as Musicacoustica at the Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing, China) where he also served as a jurist for an international composers competition, the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World Music Days (Tallinn, Estonia), Bernaola International Music Festival (Bilbao, Spain), the Vision Festival (New York), the Festival of New Trumpet (New York), the grand opening of the REDCAT Theater at Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), as well as at concert halls, clubs, universities, colleges, music conservatories, and art galleries in Austria, China, England, Estonia, Germany, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and throughout the United States.

Kaiser composes music for a variety of ensembles—from large to small, instrumental to vocal, acoustic to electronic—employing a hybrid notation of traditional and graphic elements. His large ensemble, The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, is a twenty-plus piece group that includes brass, percussion, strings, woodwinds, as well as Theremin, modular analog synth with laptop, heavily electronically effected and prepared contrabass guitar and, on occasion, choir. A performance of the Ockodektet was selected as the jazz concert of the year in the San Diego Reader. He has also performed on major television shows and films.

Kaiser has received numerous awards, grants, and commissions for works including choral music with electronics, a large-scale multi-building improvisation-based electro-acoustic work, several chamber operas, an oratorio, a video/music installation in a decommissioned women’s prison and performances on television and film scores. Commissions include the Ojai Camerata and California Lutheran University, to name a few. He has received eighteen ASCAP Plus Awards, awards from universities and colleges, fourteen Individual Artist Fellowships from the City of Ventura, three Forum of the Arts Grant administered by the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, several Subito grants from the American Composers Forum, and more.

As a conductor, Kaiser has directed many ensembles—with a focus on improvisation-oriented groups, his own operas and large ensembles, and is a former music director for the Ojai Camerata which is a vocal ensemble specializing in early and contemporary music.

Finally, as a producer—as well as recording, mixing, and mastering engineer—Kaiser has been personally involved with the production and release of hundreds of recordings from experimental to popular.