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Dr. Jeff Kaiser | Music Technology and Composition (Program Coordinator)
Dr. Jeff Kaiser
Associate Professor
Music Technology and Composition
Location/Building: Wood 008B
jkaiser@ucmo.edu
(660) 543-4115
Jeff Kaiser (Ph.D. in Music, Integrative Studies, University of California, San Diego) is a music technologist, trumpet player, composer, conductor, and scholar. Classically trained as a trumpet player, Dr. Kaiser now views his traditional instrument as hybrid with new technology in the form of software and hardware interfaces that he creates for his performances and recordings. Dr. Kaiser gains inspiration and ideas from the intersections of experimental composition and improvisation and the timbral and formal affordances provided by combining traditional instruments with emerging technologies. The roots of his music are firmly in the experimental traditions within jazz, improvised, and Western art music practices. Dr. Kaiser considers his art audio-centric, but he also works with live video, tracking, and interactive technologies. He has performed in China, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. His work is featured on Clean Feed Records, Leo Records, NineWinds, Cuneiform Records, and his own label, pfMENTUM, among others.
Embracing the idea of being an artist/scholar, Dr. Kaiser has also presented at national conferences, including the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Society for Improvised Music, SPARK, and invited presentations at colleges and universities. His scholarly work ethnographically explores contemporary musicians who use new, repurposed and reinvented electronic technologies, and critically examines how these musicians conceptualize their practice. He is particularly interested in changing notions of agency, instruments, and virtuosity, and how artists, audiences, and critics construct what is valuable and desirable in these emerging fields. In addition to documenting how creative individuals configure technologies for their own purposes, Dr. Kaiser argues that technologies can also configure musicians and musical communities by affording specific ways of creating sonic and social value.