COMPOSER QUICKLY BECOMING A FAVORITE SON IN HOLLYWOOD.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

Thomas Newman is sitting on the top of a piano in his recording studio noodling on a ukulele while waiting for the photographer to set up. At first the notes and chords don't seem like much, but soon an interesting rhythmic sound starts to emerge.

If somebody were to try to capture a slice of the five-time Oscar-nominated composer's creative process, this might be it. Though he's trained on piano, his studio, previously that of his father - Alfred Newman, the nine-time Oscar-winning composer - is stuffed with a variety of string instruments, many of them found in shops and many of them still slightly out of tune.

``I can make good noises with instruments, but I couldn't play a tune with all the right chords,'' says the 48-year-old but still boyish-looking composer, who is nominated this year for the striking score for ``Finding Nemo.''

Newman, you see, is interested in the color and texture of music and something like an out-of-tune uke is fodder for inspiration.

``He's constantly in search of new sounds; he's the experimenter in the family,'' notes Jon Burlingame, who writes for Variety and is the author of ``Sound and Vision: Sixty years of Motion Picture Soundtracks.'' ``The family'' means not only Tom's father, but also the rest of the Newman film composers - his two uncles (Lionel and Emil), brother David and cousin Randy. Tom's sister is a classical composer.

But if you think that he was just going into the family business, you'd be wrong. Newman's dad died when he was 14, and most of the impetus to study music came from his mother. Newman went on to get bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale University, but he wasn't convinced of where he was going with his life and played in rock bands for a while.

``I studied hard, because I felt that within the Newman family I was never going to be the pianist my brother Dave was or the violinist my sister Maria was. And what did I have to offer?'' says Newman, who has an easygoing, slightly shy manner.

Sounds of success

Newman got his first break in 1984 when a friend, producer Scott Rudin, asked him to score the film ``Reckless.'' Even as work kept coming, Newman, married with three children - two sons, 12 and 6, and a daughter, 10 - wasn't sure if film scoring was for him. ``I always thought I'd never be able to do it because it's not only tough to write music, but tough to write music on an amazingly tough schedule and please someone.''

But he was always interested in sound, and that helped to keep him going.

``I think I listened well, although I don't think I knew I listened well,'' he says. ``I think I responded to color, like putting paper in between strings of a piano and making it sound like a harpsichord at an early age.''

Then he wondered how to turn color into composition. Well, he figured it out. The results are among the most imaginative scores of the last decade, including the captivating percussive one for ``American Beauty,'' which Burlingame says sounds like ``anything that is hammered or thwacked'' was used. But he's quick to point out that Newman is an interesting guy who can also write traditional scores, citing ``The Road to Perdition'' with its Irish tinge and ``Little Women'' with its ``marvelous brass fanfare opening.''

``Women'' and ``Beauty'' brought Oscar nominations, and if it were possible, so should Newman's gorgeous, sweeping soundtrack for HBO's six-hour miniseries ``Angels in America,'' which Burlingame called ``the most extraordinary score television has had in years.''

On that one, Newman says director Mike Nichols wanted the score to be thematic and big. ``I remember he used the analogy of 'All About Eve' - a pithy, ironic Hollywood tale - which my dad had scored the music for. The music was romantic. Nichols' wanted the orchestra to be used as a big sweep, which was interesting because 'Angels' is so full of irony.''

There also might be something ironic or odd or simply daunting about being asked to do a score while having one that your father did being held up as an example, but Newman says he had to ``shed that skin.'' ``My promise was to please my own ear - that was a reason to struggle forward.''

Pleasing his own ear means finding those unusual sounds, which may involve electronically altering acoustic phrases. ``I tend to consider my compositions done when I finish mixing, never when I'm recording, because I tend to do a lot of overdubbing,'' he says.

People are listening

Since every score has different demands, it's hard to simply define a Thomas Newman composition, but once you hear ``American Beauty'' or ``Oscar and Lucinda'' or ``Nemo'' with its 39 different sections, you get an idea of the varied and interesting sounds that go into his music. And you'll also notice that that sound - while not specifically being copied - is influential in Hollywood.

``I think the trend in Hollywood among the sharper directors and producers is less about big themes and more about individual scenes dramatically,'' says Burlingame. ``And that often is about atmosphere, mood, texture and color, and certainly Newman excels in that.''

Newman explains it this way: The ``spatial coloristic things'' that he composes are ``not overly demanding to an ear, particularly when an ear is listening to dialogue and the eyes are watching the screen.''

Which doesn't make them musically less interesting. As Burlingame says, ``He's the kind of guy who will use anything from a Tahitian uke to jeep rims (as Newman did in 'Nemo') in search of unusual or surprising sounds.''

``There are weird instruments out there that can get you to these amazing places that you never would through study,'' says Newman, who despite nominations and acclaim is still cautious about his career.

``I don't want to overvalue myself. On a certain level, I want to be the person behind the music, but I still want it to be the music. I like underdog status.''

So he doesn't want the Oscar?

He laughs. ``If I don't get it, it makes you stronger in a way. Man, what would you say if you went up there, anyway?''

But the interview has gone on too long, and the phone rings. It's his wife, and she and his children, who really wanted him to do ``Nemo,'' are waiting for him.

``As a father I really related to the issues in 'Nemo,' '' Newman says, ``the idea of the unpredictable ocean and all the bad thi potentially can happen and how to be a father and navigate your kid through life.''

Now he's off to navigate them to a Shakey's, where - sans uke - those clanging pizza pans may inspire him to a new sound.

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Photo:

Thomas Newman - whose film scores include those for ``American Beauty,'' ``Angels in America'' and ``Little Women'' - is an Oscar nominee this year for ``Finding Nemo.''

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer