Lary Totten, Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Advisor

 

Lary was born and raised in Las Vegas.  His parents gave him the gift of music through their loving encouragement and raising him in the pre-corporate golden age of Las Vegas’s ubiquitous jazz cosmos.  Every weekend they would go out to dinner, and in the lounges and dinner shows of Fremont Street and the strip, listen to some of the best (at least to Lary) jazz musicians in the world including Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Count Basie, Harry James, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Teagarden, Anita O’Day, Phil Harris, Sy Zentner, Hoagie Carmichael, and Doc Severinsen -- to name only a few.

 

In his later teens, his parents moved to California so he could attend the University of Redlands where he played and taught piano to help pay his way through school.  His career focus changed from music into real estate, managing nonprofits, getting a fellowship from an organization underwritten by the Ford Foundation and UC Berkeley to go to graduate school and become a child psychotherapist.  For the last few years he has been the school psychologist for a small district in the mountains above Bakersfield.   He attributes his colorful and varied career to “a habitual inability to hold down a stable job.”

 

After his wife passed away in 1997 he renewed his interest in jazz piano and played a few dinner music and accompanist gigs.  After moving to Bakersfield he became the pianist for the Bakersfield Church of Religious Science’s Center for Spiritual Living.  After meeting Steve Eisen, he asked Steve if he could help the board of directors get BJW IRS nonprofit status in exchange for being able to “chill with” Steve and his talented musician board of director buddies. (Steve was very eager to say “yes!’).  Time permitting, Lary usually plays a special jazz piano number every Tuesday night.  His real joy however is in helping to encourage and inspire student musicians and vocalists of all ages and ability levels, to get up . . .  and play jazz.  Lary says, if he can do it, anyone can do it.