Flautist Feeling Life’s Highs, Lows

SAN DIEGO — James Newton is best known for his exotic, ethereal flute playing and for his prolific jazz and classical composing.

But as Newton’s career is hitting an all-time high, with a new teaching post at UC Irvine, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a new recording contract expected, what really got him excited as he talked by phone from his home in San Pedro was a question about how the recent riots in Los Angeles had affected him.

“I have a lot of thoughts about that,” said Newton, who will perform Friday and Saturday at the Horton Grand Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter. “Neglect and lack of hope highly influenced what’s going on. The last two years I taught at Cal Arts (California Institute of the Arts in Valencia), and we gave concerts and workshops in inner cities. The difference in facilities in upper middle-class neighborhoods and inner cities is tragic.

“In the inner cities, there are no jobs for youths, so they don’t have any hope. They’ve been beaten down by the injustices of our society.”

With the lack of both jobs and social programs, Newton says, the situation in Los Angeles today is much more difficult for young people than when he grew up there and such programs helped him go to college and find a future.

“If you beat a dog you go to jail. If you beat a man look what happens,” he said, referring to Rodney King. “What kind of message is that sending to all people of color, and also to whites? There were many whites who were outraged by what happened. This situation has left a very deep scar on everyone I know. I had friends call me from Europe after the riots, and they were begging me to leave.

“But my roots in this country are very deep. My grandfather spilled blood in Europe during World War I, my father spilled blood in Vietnam. Why should I leave this country? At the same time, this country has to learn how to treat minorities and women on a whole other level.”

Newton’s concern fuels his art. The $30,000 Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded in April for a symphony he plans to write. It will be his first and will be performed at the Zelt Musik Festival in Freiburg, Germany, next summer.

“I think one movement is going to be called ‘Riot’,” Newton said. “Before the riots, I thought about four movements dedicated to great women: Mahalia Jackson, Georgia O’Keeffe, (Assemblywoman) Maxine Waters. Or I might work it out to where it’s subtitled ‘Riot.’ ”

In the midst of racial inequalities, Newton believes his rising career is one sign for hope.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the glass ceiling,” Newton said. “These are the first times I’ve broken through, with UCI and the Guggenheim.”

UC Irvine hired Newton, who has a music degree from Cal State Los Angeles, as a tenured professor. He starts in the fall and will teach undergraduate and graduate classes in jazz and classical music, eventually including seminars on some of his favorite musicians and composers: Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Olivier Messiaen, a French classical composer who died earlier this year.

On the recording side, Newton says he is close to signing a deal with a major label. In addition, a new release (on a Japanese label distributed by Sony in the United States in a one record deal) is due out in two months, a collaboration with his longtime friend, saxophonist David Murray.

Newton, 39, got hooked on music the same way as many of his peers.

“I started playing electric bass at 13 in a rhythm-and-blues band, a Motown cover band,” he recalled. “Then in 1967, when Hendrix hit, that was it for me. I stayed on bass, but a trio from the Motown band split off and we did every song off ‘Are You Experienced.’ ”

Soon, though, Newton was captivated by another instrument.

“By 16, I had started to play flute, by ear for two years, then I started lessons. I was very moved by the sound of the instrument and the expressive potentialities.

“I heard Eric Dolphy at a very young age but certainly didn’t understand what he was doing. I also heard Charles Lloyd and Ian Anderson. After that, my tastes changed and developed, and I was influenced by Yusef Lateef, Jean Pierre Rampal, Aurele Nicolet (a Swiss flutist), Frank Wess and James Moody.

“I’m crazy about James Moody,” Newton said of the San Diego-based flutist and saxophonist. “Every time I get a chance to hear him I want to come home and throw the flute against the wall. He swings so hard, he plays beautiful rhythmically and harmonically, he’s a genius. When I hear him I realize it takes a long time to learn to play this music.”

But Newton has developed a distinctive sound of his own through a dozen albums as a leader, and he too is revered by his fellows.

“He’s one of my allies on the instrument in that the jazz flute has long suffered from a reputation of being a little too sweet, a little too fluffy to go toe to toe with bigger horns, saxes and trombones and the like,” said San Diego flutist Holly Hofmann, who books the Horton Grand. “He’s one of the flutists that tries to cross the line and play in an assertive, almost aggressive manner. He’s on the cutting edge of what’s new on the flute.”

His flute has a primal, organic sound. He is capable of pure, drawn-out vibrato notes, but also of moody, breathy flurries that sail above the band’s deep, earthbound rhythms like high-flying, shrieking tropical birds. He dashes off speedy be-bop-style runs, but also glides into the murkier, moodier territory of Arthur Blythe, Lester Bowie and Cecil Taylor--he’s played with all of them.

Part of the key to Newton’s originality is his dual careers in classical and jazz music, which feed each other.

“I think that both musics have learned a lot from one another,” Newton said. “When Jelly Roll Morton would take an aria from Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore’ and orchestrate it, he was acknowledging that music, but also acknowledging it from his eyes or his world.”

In his own career, Newton said he feels more secure in his musical direction than ever.

“Inside, I think I’ve changed a lot,” he said. “It takes so many years until you really understand what you want to do and how to go about it. Now I feel I know myself so well artistically. I’m really trying to get to the essence, and for me the essence is always--more and more I’m writing for the glory of God. Recently I realized that the amount of time we have here is short.”

Newton, who has a 15-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter, said he was profoundly affected by his wife’s recent surgery--not life-threatening, but nonetheless serious.

“I have to get to the things that are really important. I’m working very hard on doing the best that I can while I’m here. It means that I’m growing as a human being. Your inner growth is just as important as your musical growth. You meet a lot of great musicians who are pretty lousy human beings. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

* At the Horton Grand, Newton will be backed by his West Coast road band of pianist Kei Akagi, drummer Sonship Theus and bassist Darek Oleszkiewicz. Music starts at 8:30 both nights. There’s a $5 cover charge.