Posted on: Friday, July 20, 2001

Visiting flutist finds double pleasure in paradise with Grammy nomination

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

On a serendipitous note, flutist Nestor Torres, who was vacationing on Kaua'i all week, got word that his latest CD, "This Side of Paradise," is a Latin Grammy Award nominee for Best Pop Instrumental CD.

"I can't think of a better place than Hawai'i to get the good news," said Torres, 44, who is performing in tonight's Hawai'i International Jazz Festival Tribute to Stan Kenton Part I concert at Blaisdell Concert Hall. "This is paradise," he said in a telephone interview from the Princeville Resort.

"I decided to come early and relax, to soak up the spirit of aloha," Torres said. "You hear about the aloha, but until you come and experience it, by hiking the Na Pali coast, horseback riding and boating, you just don't know how wonderful it is."

This joy, he said, coupled with the Grammy nomination leading up to the Sept. 21 awards, will surely affect his concert performance.

Torres is no stranger to jazz aficionados here. He last performed in the 1998 event, sharing his Afro-Cuban music, called charanga, which showcases his mellow flute notes in the jazz idiom of improvisation.

"I grew up with music," he said of his Puerto Rican roots and a father who was a musician and a mother who sang. "But of all the instruments possible, I chose to play the flute, because it was different. When I went to music school as a youngster, I looked at the blackboard and there was a picture of the flute. And that's what I wanted to learn."

Of course, he has a classical music background, schooled at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and other schools in New York. "You need the classics for a music career and I still take private classes today, from people like Sam Baron and Keith Underwood."

He said his exposure to charanga and his ability to do the jazz thing of improvisation have been key to his success.

"My background helped develop the style I have today," he said. "And when I think about it, I really learned to improvise as a child, because at age 5, Santa Claus gave me drums. Drums are percussive instruments, beating out a rhythm; the flute enables you to play out a melody.

"And yes, the flute has a distinct language, something primal. The way I feel about it, the drum is the oldest instrument in humankind; you just bang on something for rhythm. Early on, humans learned they could get music by blowing through reeds. This universal, primal thing has been in so many cultures — the shakuhachi (in Japan), the nose flute (in cultures such as Hawai'i), the quena (of the Andes). It all comes down to human expressions."