Simi resident teaches history through music
By Sylvie Belmond

belmond@theacorn.com

ALL TOGETHER NOW—Craig Newton, a Simi Valley musician, demonstrates how American music relates to major historical events during a presentation at a local library. Newton plays about 20 different instruments.

While Craig Newton was unpacking a series of instruments at the Agoura Hills library recently, a group of young children expectantly waited to hear the various sounds.

Right from the start, Newton’s show on the history of American music captured the young audience’s attention, inviting them to participate through dance, song and hands-on activities.

Newton took the children and their parents on a sound-filled historical journey, using an array of musical instruments to make his point. He can play the violin, guitar, mandolin, piano, flute, trombone and many others—about 20 instruments in all.

The entertainer has been performing a variety of American music for over a decade. His career has taken him through most of the U.S. and has given him the opportunity to play in all kinds of situations, he said.

But today the Simi Valley resident, who is married with three children, uses his adaptable musical skills to introduce local children to a variety of styles and to the unique sounds of all his instruments.

He entertains at school assemblies, libraries and other local events using a 45-minute presentation that features an interactive overview of the history of American music, relating it to major events.

The idea for the music program came when Newton, then a struggling musician, thought it would be fun to do a program about the roots of American music for his daughter’s school in Simi Valley.

“I got such a good reaction that it just took off and here I am 14 years later, doing programs all over California and sometimes Arizona,” he said.

Newton’s programs include “How the West Was Sung,” “America’s Multicultural Music” and “Songs of American Heroes.”

“I started playing music when I was five years old because I always loved music and my father was a musician,” said Newton.

The budding musician started to play the piano and the flute when he was 7 and took on the trombone at 10, but that was only the beginning.

“When I was 11, another boy brought a guitar to school and I just loved it,” said Newton, who learned a new instrument every couple of years thereafter.

Music sparked something in Newton, prompting him to share his gift with children. “He is just fulfilling his dream,” said Mary, his wife. “He wants to show them that they can make a living with their own passions.”

When he’s not entertaining children, Newton writes music and performs solo and with various bands in the Ventura County area, such as the Rhythm Rangers (rock, country and blues) and Jim LeBoueff and the Big Hunks of Love (an Elvis band).

For more information about Newton’s programs, visit www. craignewton.com.