Magician on journey to create own unique sound

Friday, Oct. 26, 2001 | 9:51 a.m.

Flutist Robert Dick says that people are surprised to hear him play rock music on his flute. In fact, some people are surprised to hear anything he plays.

Termed by admirers and critics as "the Jimi Hendrix of the flute," Dick is known for challenging traditional ideas about the flute and transforming ways in which the instrument is played. In addition to classical approaches, he incorporates bluesy, percussive and electric sounds as well as world music to his performance.

On Saturday the creative recording artist and composer from New York will perform at a free concert at UNLV. Among his repertoire will be three Telemann fantasies, two caprices by Paganini (transcribed by Dick for the flute) and "Sliding Life Blues" -- a piece Dick performs with a his modified flute creation. Known as the Robert Dick Glissando Headjoint (mouthpiece), it works similar to a whammy on a guitar.

Growing up in a housing project in Manhattan where his mother taught piano lessons, Dick's roots are classical, yet he was inspired by nonclassical musicians, such as the Beatles, John Coltrane and Hendrix.

Dick first took interest in the flute in 1957 after hearing a piccolo solo in the song "Rockin' Robin" that was played on a top-40 radio station.

He said he immediately fell in love with the instrument, but he was only 7 at the time and his mother had been told that he was too young to play and would have to wait until he was 8.

Once his lessons began the next year, they continued until he was 19. He studied with several professional musicians before he took a three-year hiatus to study on his own.

In his early 20s he had written his first book, "The Other Flute: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques." He's since written several books and pieces of music. He performs throughout the world -- alone and accompanied by other musicians -- and teaches his techniques to flute students in master classes.

"I come from a generation of musicians who believe in transformation of what they're playing," Dick said recently in a telephone interview from New York.

Musically, he said, there isn't a huge difference between composers Bach and Mozart and Hendrix.

"They were all virtuosos who could play something inside themselves," he said. "(Hendrix is) really my hero ... he was trying to create his own sound world."

Paganini, he said, is "19th-century heavy metal."

Dick alternates performing on the flute, alto flute, bass flute and the stand-up contrabass flute. Developing his own his unique sound on the instruments has been -- and is -- a continuous journey.

As the son of a piano teacher, Dick said that he was well aware that piano students progressed musically from one-note sounds to harmonious chords, something he noticed in his brother's cello playing.

So when Dick began studying the flute he assumed that he too would dabble in various chord structures and melodic harmonies. But the nature of the instrument slightly hampered his expectations, and two months into studying the instrument he realized that flutists play only single-note melodies -- a reality that he said baffled and angered him.

"I decided I (was) going to do something about that one day."

Anyone familiar with Dick's music or just getting their first taste, knows that he did indeed do something about it --and then some. He still surprises audiences with his Hendrix songs. He said with a laugh, "Nobody expects me to play (Hendrix's) 'Machine Gun.' "