James Newton

Jazz flutist James Newton, a consistent winner in magazine polls of critics and readers, has accepted a position as a professor of music at UC Irvine, effective this fall. Newton, a 38-year-old San Pedro resident, is a recording artist, arranger and teacher who performs in a variety of mainstream and avant-garde jazz styles and who is adept at classical music as well.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has come to its senses, reversing its misguided decision to disqualify Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's score for "The Dark Knight." The academy had initially said there were too many composers listed on the music cue sheet. (The composers had listed a music editor, a sound designer and an arranger as a way of rewarding the people who worked with them on the massive project.

Award-winning flutist James Newton, the San Pedro resident who has achieved international acclaim for his mainstream and avant-garde jazz and classical performances, has been selected as the Chancellor's Distinguished Lecturer in Fine Arts at UC Irvine. As part of his residency, Newton--who is a professor of composition, jazz and jazz history at CalArts--will rehearse the UC Irvine jazz ensemble, offer flute tutorials and play a concert with his ensemble Saturday at 8 p.m.

The Beastie Boys can't be sued by a jazz flutist for using a six-second sample of his music in their song "Pass the Mic," a U.S. appeals court ruled. The rap group obtained a license to use the recording of James Newton's "Choir" and repeated an excerpt from the nearly five-minute recording more than 40 times in their song. Newton, a Cal State L.A.

Long regarded as the young master of jazz flute, James Newton went through a period where an overly formal compositional sense reined in his playing and left the music on the dry side. Not on "In Love," where Newton gets back to quartet basics and cuts loose with the exemplary rhythm section of bassist Anthony Cox, drummer Billy Hart and pianist Mike Cain. Newton meshes sterling technique with free-flowing imagination on a wide-ranging program which includes the frenzied tribute, "Mr.

James Newton has never received the attention he deserves on his home turf. Though the San Pedro resident consistently tops polls as best jazz flutist and is acclaimed in Europe and on the East Coast for his compositional abilities, he performs infrequently here, usually in connection with his job as professor of composition and jazz history at the California Institute of the Arts.

There's a new jazz big band in town, and it's coming from a fresh place. Leave it to James Newton, the famed flutist-composer-bandleader-educator, to pull it off, leading the adventurous, newly founded Luckman Jazz Orchestra, based at Cal State Los Angeles. One afternoon this week, Newton, a large, friendly presence under a porkpie hat, could be found rehearsing his new band, warming up for tonight's inaugural concert at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

In response to the issue of the Beastie Boys' use of sampling the musical sound from composer-flutist James Newton's recorded composition "Choir" ("A Musician Writes It, a Rapper Borrows It; A Swap or a Threat?" by Geoff Boucher, Sept. 21), Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch misses the point when he states, "What we used is three notes and three notes do not constitute a composition." It is not the three notes that they used, it is the unmistakable sound of those three notes of James Newton in both his performance and composition.

The Beastie Boys can't be sued by a jazz flutist for using a six-second sample of his music in their song "Pass the Mic," a U.S. appeals court ruled. The rap group obtained a license to use the recording of James Newton's "Choir" and repeated an excerpt from the nearly five-minute recording more than 40 times in their song. Newton, a Cal State L.A.

James Newton, the composer and flutist who led a quartet Friday through Sunday at Catalina's in Hollywood, has come a long way since he was first reviewed here six years ago. In those days he was still playing "Autumn Leaves" and "Bags' Groove." Today he has his sights set on more complex objectives. The first set Friday began with Newton's "Oblong," which he described as a blues, though it took no time at all to whirl away into many outward-bound variations.

In response to the issue of the Beastie Boys' use of sampling the musical sound from composer-flutist James Newton's recorded composition "Choir" ("A Musician Writes It, a Rapper Borrows It; A Swap or a Threat?" by Geoff Boucher, Sept. 21), Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch misses the point when he states, "What we used is three notes and three notes do not constitute a composition." It is not the three notes that they used, it is the unmistakable sound of those three notes of James Newton in both his performance and composition.

If You Can Feel What I'm Feeling Then It's a Musical Masterpiece But If You Can Hear What I'm Dealing With Then That's Cool at Least --"Pass the Mic" by the Beastie Boys The embittered jazz musician calls it rhymin' and stealing. The shocked rappers argue that it's about a minor player manufacturing a musical controversy. Either way, James W. Newton Jr. vs. the Beastie Boys is the latest example of hip-hop artists getting grief from musicians who view rap song collages as artistic shoplifting.

When a choreographer sits in a music studio, or a composer watches a dance rehearsal, both movement and sound tend to take fresh creative swerves. Or at least that was what happened when veteran dance-maker Donald McKayle and flutist-composer James Newton got together to make "Cross Roads," which has its West Coast premiere Friday night, during a two-day engagement of the Jose Limon Dance Company at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

There's a new jazz big band in town, and it's coming from a fresh place. Leave it to James Newton, the famed flutist-composer-bandleader-educator, to pull it off, leading the adventurous, newly founded Luckman Jazz Orchestra, based at Cal State Los Angeles. One afternoon this week, Newton, a large, friendly presence under a porkpie hat, could be found rehearsing his new band, warming up for tonight's inaugural concert at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

It's fairly common for an A-list film composer to be booked months in advance, sometimes even a year or more. Directors like to be assured that the composer they want will be available during post-production. What's much rarer is for a director to ask the composer to begin writing his score even before a frame of film has been shot. That's what happened to James Newton Howard on "Unbreakable," the Bruce Willis-Samuel L. Jackson film that opened Wednesday. Director-writer-producer M.

Taking the stage in a bright blue choir robe, flutist James Newton made no secret that he intended to turn Saturday's event at the Orange County Performing Arts Center's intimate Founders Hall into something of a revival meeting. "If you take the spiritual out of jazz," he warned the audience, "you have no jazz."

If You Can Feel What I'm Feeling Then It's a Musical Masterpiece But If You Can Hear What I'm Dealing With Then That's Cool at Least --"Pass the Mic" by the Beastie Boys The embittered jazz musician calls it rhymin' and stealing. The shocked rappers argue that it's about a minor player manufacturing a musical controversy. Either way, James W. Newton Jr. vs. the Beastie Boys is the latest example of hip-hop artists getting grief from musicians who view rap song collages as artistic shoplifting.

James Newton has garnered so many accolades in recent years for his composing and arranging talents that it's easy to forget just what a top-notch flutist he is. Working in a quartet Saturday at the Village Theatre on the UC Irvine campus where he teaches music, Newton put his flute directly in the spotlight.

Last spring, choreographer Donald McKayle heard some taped sketches of electronic music that flutist James Newton, a fellow member of the UC Irvine faculty, had been working on. The next thing Newton knew, McKayle was asking him to compose the music for "Gumbo Ya-Ya," a ballet for which McKayle had been commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington. The work is being presented in San Francisco tonight. "It all moved very rapidly," Newton recalled this week.

James Newton has garnered so many accolades in recent years for his composing and arranging talents that it's easy to forget just what a top-notch flutist he is. Working in a quartet Saturday at the Village Theatre on the UC Irvine campus where he teaches music, Newton put his flute directly in the spotlight.