Biography
Bluestar recording artist Gene Newton balances his role as a New Age composer with a long-standing commitment to education. For more than twenty years he has instructed music and theater arts at a public high school in Spokane, Washington, where he leads the concert choir, symphonic choir, and two jazz choirs while also offering a class in music technology. Over the past eight years he has additionally guided the extracurricular ensemble Jazzphonics, steering the group toward awards and recognition at competitions and festivals across the region.
In his free hours Newton shapes instrumental works that fuse precise technical command—acknowledged in the Korg liner notes—with instinctive imagination, yielding a singular, otherworldly texture. His New Age inspirations include Vangelis, Colin Chinn, Peter Buffett, Jean Michel Jarre, and Michael Gettel. “But there are many others I enjoy,” he adds. “My favorite classical composers are Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert, Charles Ives, Chopin, and Stravinsky. I also love jazz and Broadway music. I really just let my soul do whatever music comes to it when I am composing; it is a very intuitive process that I try and stay out of the way of, at least I try and keep my ego out of the way.” His debut release, Celestial Plea from 1993, honors New Age seminar leader Wayne Dyer, while 1997’s Tarot: Music for Readings plainly reflects further astral themes; Elemental Suite arrived the following year.
In his free hours Newton shapes instrumental works that fuse precise technical command—acknowledged in the Korg liner notes—with instinctive imagination, yielding a singular, otherworldly texture. His New Age inspirations include Vangelis, Colin Chinn, Peter Buffett, Jean Michel Jarre, and Michael Gettel. “But there are many others I enjoy,” he adds. “My favorite classical composers are Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert, Charles Ives, Chopin, and Stravinsky. I also love jazz and Broadway music. I really just let my soul do whatever music comes to it when I am composing; it is a very intuitive process that I try and stay out of the way of, at least I try and keep my ego out of the way.” His debut release, Celestial Plea from 1993, honors New Age seminar leader Wayne Dyer, while 1997’s Tarot: Music for Readings plainly reflects further astral themes; Elemental Suite arrived the following year.
Albums
