In most instances, creating off the top of one’s head is bad and shows a lack of preparedness. In jazz music, it’s a defining characteristic.
Improvisation was the primary theme of the Oct. 4 performance and discussion featuring jazz guitarist Mike Baggetta and trumpet player Kris Tiner, who is a jazz professor at Bakersfield College.
The two met at a jazz camp in Washington, D.C., in 2001 and in 2004 formed TIN/BAG, a duo “that strives to realize a new and personal approach to duo playing through improvisation, composition and reinterpretation,” according to a flier distributed at the performance. TIN/BAG played at the Metro Galleries on 19th Street on Oct. 6 to promote their new album “And Begin Again.”
The event, held at the BC Band Room in the Speech, Arts and Music building, opened with two improvised performances of jazz standards by Baggetta on his hollow-bodied Gibson guitar and a question and answer segment right after.
Baggetta explained to the audience, which was primarily comprised of students in Tiner’s jazz classes, that an important element of jazz improvisation is rubatto, or the ability of a musical piece to be played out of time. It’s easier for a musician playing solo to play rubatto because he or she isn’t dependent on the other musicians to keep up.
When one audience member suggested Baggetta play something completely improvised, Baggetta was more than happy to oblige, asking the audience to keep track of his approach and make comments afterward.
The improvised piece made heavy use of arpeggios, or single strings played in a single chord, diminished chords, useful for connecting harmonies, and bending the neck of the guitar to produce a sound that Baggetta termed as “ghostly.”
Tiner and Baggetta then performed together as TIN/BAG, improvising on the title track from their album “And Begin Again.” Their first album “There, Just As You Look For It” was described by TIN/BAG as “experimental,” with Baggetta clipping the strings of his guitar and Tiner fashioning an alto mouthpiece on his trumpet to create a different sound in the studio.
TIN/BAG’s final musical composition was a cover song that they had both been working on independently on opposite sides of the country but hadn’t played together until that moment. In their rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman,” Tiner played the vocal line while Baggetta played what he deemed a “supportive role.”
Toward the end, Tiner and Baggetta explained that it is difficult to find work as a jazz performer. Baggetta primarily pays his bills by giving private guitar lessons and Tiner got into teaching at BC because he didn’t want to be a studio musician playing music he wasn’t interested in.
TIN/BAG plans to perform in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New York in November after Tiner directs the BC Jazz Ensemble Fall Concert at the Indoor Theater on Oct. 27.
Baggetta was raised in Massachusetts in a “musical family” where his dad taught him to play guitar, but he didn’t take his first formal lesson until he entered college. Tiner grew up in Wasco and learned how to play the trumpet from his father when he was 10 years old.