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NW 80829CD
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"James Newton's (b. 1953) third New World release continues and extends his musical testimony based on biblical scripture and his own spiritual discernment. It is a fascinating, if not mystical, experience of the intersection of Newton's personal faith, creativity, and theological introspection. Newton is a quintessential twenty-first-century composer whose influences and inspirations are many. Anyone familiar with his performance trajectory and formation as flautist, composer, and improvisor will recognize that he is the result of many influences and inspirations. Like many of his generation, he is heir to multiple musical legacies and musical/cultural traditions. Newton acknowledges these influences, from Monteverdi to Messiaen to Mahalia Jackson, from the music of John and Alice Coltrane to Javanese gamelan and the music of the Central African rainforest. And yet it would be a fool's errand to attempt to tease out each of these inspirations. Newton's influences are not only musical, but also theological. This recording reflects his inspiration from theologians past and present such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Howard Thurman. Newton's musical language is elusive and must be understood as an aesthetic unity. His imagination as an improviser is not lost in the translation to these fixed compositions. All the compositions on this recording reflect the composer's extensive background and singular approach to improvisation. Each of these pieces has an improvisatory character, yet they are all through-composed. This music could perhaps be best described as pantonal, although there are clear references to modal constructions that can be heard on the musical surface. The pitch organization defies systematic categorization. The music does not fit easily within a single system or style and thus defies many of the analytic methods currently used by music theorists and musicologists. It is in the syntax, the aural experience, that one perceives the coherence and cohesion of each piece."
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CD
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NW 80714CD
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"This is the first recording devoted to James Newton's (b. 1953) sacred works. Among his influences, Newton cites Bach and Stravinsky's masses and cantatas, as well as the operas of Messiaen, Puccini and Verdi as touchstones. While Newton does not appropriate materials from European composers, he does occasionally utilize their methods, his use of Bach-derived counterpoint in the 'Kyrie' being a salient example in his Mass (2006-7). However, its usage here should not be considered in isolation, but in juxtaposition with those passages of the 'Kyrie' that draw on the harmonic contours of Billy Strayhorn's 'Chelsea Bridge.' Newton does not attempt an overt synthesis of the two traditions; rather, he lets their colors reverberate against each other like the heraldic stripes of a Kenneth Noland chevron. Between the Cherubim (2007) for solo piano and the song In a Moment, in the Twinkling of an Eye (2004, rev. 2009) complement Newton's Mass both in terms of musical statements and messages of faith. Newton's writing for piano in the Mass is flecked with flourishes that exude the spontaneity of improvisation, a quality present throughout Between the Cherubim. Inspired by Bach, who incorporated English, French and Italian dances into his sacred music, and Thomas A. Dorsey, who shaped gospel music out of the blues, In a Moment, in the Twinkling of an Eye is a stand-alone example of Newton's transformations of secular materials through the use of sacred texts, in this case a passage from 1st Corinthians. Newton's writing for voice in the initial passages of the song resembles that of his Mass, his emphasis on diction and dynamics echoing the African-American tradition of concert singing, a historically busy intersection between sacred and secular forms of music."
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