Bakersfield College held its annual music summit. Jazz professor Kris Tiner and Professor Josh Ottum were responsible for gifting this summit to BC students, teachers, and alumni. Tiner and Ottum created the summit so students would be able to share their original music and see professional artists perform.

Originally, this series of music summits would be held in person for one week in September at Simonsen Performing Arts Center. But due to COVID, the summits will be held on Zoom once a week throughout the entire fall semester.

The creative music summits started in 2017 and were created so students would be given a chance to share their music with the public.

“We use the term ‘Creative Music’ because we don’t want to limit the performances to any single genre of music. But to emphasize creativity across many different genres and styles,” Tiner said.

Tiner has been producing concerts here in Bakersfield for over twenty years and wanted to incorporate his past work into the jazz studies program at Bakersfield College, which is what he did alongside Josh Ottum.

The guest artist was Dave Bazan, an indie rock singer-songwriter for the band Pedro the Lion. Bazan’s performance was live-streamed on Facebook where he played a total of three songs. Everything was running smoothly until technical difficulties caused Bazan to exit out of the live stream. It only took a few minutes for him to log back into the call and finish his set without any more interruptions.

Dave Bazan has experienced many technical difficulties before and he said,

“We all endure living up to standards,” Bazan said.

He said this because expected every performance to go well and wanted to live up to those expectations. Bazan also got many questions about how he works on his music. He stated that he usually comes up with the music first then works on the lyrics last.

“Lyrics have meaning attached to them,” Bazan said.

He only listened to Christian music until he started eighth grade. He compared to growing up on Christian music as “having your own hills”.

“People say that they can hear hints of Christian rock in my music,” Bazan said.

Bazan has a documentary, “Strange Negotiations”, that follows his spiritual journey and will be screened in theatres in California, Washington, and Minnesota.