The Great New Age of Craig Huxley

In 1967, a 13-year-old actor named Craig Hundley was cast as Captain Kirk’s nephew in an episode of television’s “Star Trek.” At that time he was plunging into dual careers as a TV actor (he won roles in “Kung Fu,” “The Flying Nun” and “Bewitched”) and as a prodigy pianist.

Many years later he returned to the “Star Trek” saga in a very different role; now a successful composer in the electronic music field, he supplied some of the eerie sounds in the Klingon sequence of the film “Star Trek: the Motion Picture.” He also worked on the synthesizer programming for parts of “Star Trek II” and was involved with the movie series through “Star Trek V.”

Today the one-time teen-age whiz, now 35, is at the center of his own musical and electronic empire. Now known as Craig Huxley (he wanted to identify with the family of philosophers), he owns a $3-million recording studio in Burbank, named (what else?) Enterprise. He records his own music and the music of countless others who use his studios; he produces and performs during many of the sessions, often using instruments he invented. In some cases he releases the results on his own New Age label, Sonic Atmospheres, or on his recently launched pop label, Sling Shot Records.

During his teen years, Hundley/Huxley was identified with jazz; he even had a young trio that played at Shelly’s Manne Hole. But at around age 20, he says, “I got out of jazz because I couldn’t stand what fusion was doing to it. I found myself more interested in philosophy, and in electronics and New Age and the avant-garde. Then I began inventing and building instruments.”

One of his more celebrated inventions, heard during those weird interludes in “Star Trek” movies, is the Blaster Beam. Its sounding board resonator, along with magnets, strings and an 18-foot aluminum beam, can create some of the strangest sounds ever heard. “Some of them,” says Huxley, “can be felt rather than heard, as they go a whole octave lower than any note on the piano.”

Though he still occasionally plays piano, Huxley’s world today is populated by synclaviers, Yamaha TX816s, Roland Super Jupiters, a Flexitonal Clavichord and, of course, the Blaster Beam, all of which can be heard in “Quantum Mechanix,” a recent album in which he took part as leader, composer, arranger, producer and engineer.

One of the participants in “Quantum Mechanix” is Hyman Katz, who like Huxley has become as much a businessman as a musician; he is now general manager of Sonic Atmospheres. He and Huxley jammed together as children. Katz is the son of noted cellist Fred Katz, who played in the original Chico Hamilton Quintet.

Here and there in this curious and intriguing CD, along with effects that sometimes suggest a latter-day, toned-down counterpart of Weather Report, are brief reminders of Huxley’s past associations: saxophonists Bud Shank and Bob Sheppard are heard on several tracks. For the most part, though, it’s Spacemaster Huxley who’s clearly in charge.

More typical of Huxley’s catalogue, which now includes 22 albums (all available on CD) are two contributions by Don Harriss, considered one of the masters of New Age pop, whose “Elevations,” accorded good airplay and respectable sales, was followed by “Vanishing Points,” which has earned impassioned praise from the likes of John Sebastian, who programs for the radio station KTWV, “the Wave.” Harriss is a virtual one-man band, with his Steinway grand, synclavier, Yamaha and Macintosh computer, and with engineer Gary Chase organizing the synclavier programming for such Harriss pieces as “Sunlight Samples” and “The Rajah’s Tea Party.”

“With people like Don Harriss, Michael Stearns and L. Subramaniam,” says Huxley, “we have a great line of albums. What we have to contend with is the confusion about categories--whether this or that album should be classified as adult contemporary, AOR (album-oriented rock) or whatever.

“After four years of running the company we have a better product. The only real hang-up is distribution, which seems to be a harder problem than ever.”

But Huxley has enough other irons in the fire to minimize any need to worry about the evolution of his label. His studios are in constant use by other companies. Answering a phone call the other day, he said: “I’ll have to call you back--we’re busy in all four studios at the moment. We have the Doobie Brothers in one room, Melissa Manchester in a second, Tom Jones in another, and the flutist Steve Kujala is making an album in the fourth.”

Before the dream of building his own studios and record companies became a reality, Huxley had a long run as a performer and composer in TV and movies, working on countless sessions with Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, James Ingram and other pop biggies.

For the movie “Dreamscape” he produced the entire sound track, working with the composer Maurice Jarre and programming the synthesizers. (He released the “Dreamscape” sound track album on Sonic Atmospheres.) Shortly afterward MGM hired him to co-produce the score for “2010,” for which he collaborated with composer David Shire on a predominantly electronic score.

Despite the pressures of his multiple operations, Huxley continues to keep his hand in as a composer. “I still do ‘Knots Landing’ about once a month, with Jerry Immel as co-composer, and I collaborated with Leon Ware on writing and producing ‘Undercover,’ which was the title number for Leon’s album on Sling Shot Records.”

At present the Sling Shot label is more or less dormant, but Huxley and Katz have come up with a third company, Sonic Edge. “We want to use this for material that is, so to speak, on the cutting edge of today’s developments,” says Katz--a surprising statement, since it would hardly seem possible for anything to be more contemporary than what can already be found in the Sonic Atmosphere lists.

With his studios, his record companies, the composing and arranging and inventing and constant search for expansion and innovation, Huxley has succeeded in areas far beyond anything that was predicted for him during his years as a teen-age piano prodigy and part-time actor.

Today he is a successful businessman, a husband, father of a 2-year-old daughter, and, at heart, a musician who has never forgotten the old values.

“You know,” he said, “I still play Bill Evans tapes in my car.”