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Tony Levin
Tony Levin was born in Boston on June 6, 1946. He grew up in the suburb of Brookline and began playing upright bass at 10 yrs old. In high school, he picked up tuba, soloing with the concert band. He also started a barbershop quartet. But he primarily played classical music on the upright, most notably performing at the White House with Marvin Rabin's Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra for John and Jackie Kennedy. He then attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY and played in the Rochester Philharmonic. Also at the school was Steve Gadd, now a renowned drummer, who introduced Tony to playing a higher level of jazz and rock. He traded in his Ampeg baby bass for an old (at that time) Fender Precision bass, which was his only instrument for many years.
In 1970, Tony moved to New York City, joined a band called Aha, the Attack of the Green Slime Beast, with Don Preston of The Mothers of Invention. Soon after, he began working as a session musician and through the 1970's he played bass on many albums.
In the late '70s wanting to do more live playing, Tony joined Peter Gabriel's band. He had met Peter through producer Bob Ezrin (with whom Tony had recorded Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare, and Lou Reed's Berlin.) Tony has played with Gabriel, both on the road and in the studio, since then. On that first Peter Gabriel album, Tony played some tuba as well as bass, and directed a short barbershop quartet version of a song.
It was in these early years with Gabriel that Tony switched to playing Music Man basses, and also developed his playing of the Chapman Stick. More recently, the song Big Time, from Gabriel's So album, inspired the development of Funk Fingers, which are chopped off drumsticks used to hammer on the bass strings. Levin credits Gabriel with the idea, and Andy Moore, his tech at the time, with actually making them workable.
In 1978, Tony moved to Woodstock NY, to join the band L'Image, which included his old friend Steve Gadd, as well as Mike Mainieri and Warren Bernhardt. The band, which did some very special music, broke up after a year, and Tony stayed in Woodstock, where he still lives.
On Peter Gabriel's first album, Tony met Robert Fripp and, in 1980, after having played on Fripp's solo album Exposure, he became a member of the '80s incarnation of King Crimson. The band has changed form a few times in the years since then, but Levin continues to be a member - having last toured with the band in 2008.
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Rachel Z: Sensual
![Read "Sensual" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/080adabffc4d5b378e0c62618df94f94.jpg)
by Mike Jurkovic
Whatever her impetus--be it the loss of her parents or peans to a shared sense of hearth, home and heaven--pianist/composer Rachel Z's thirteenth full length album, Sensual, bares a sincere, hopeful humanity. Buoyed by a sense of survival, Sensual opens as if it were a letter, closing with the Foo Fighters' crotch-kick raise-the-roof-'n-rile-'em-up These Days." Sensual pulls one in fast and fully with the keenly seductive opener, Save My Soul." It dances. It stirs. Z, whose ...
read moreA Supreme Love
![Read "A Supreme Love" reviewed by Duncan Heining](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/d014bc639edac99c29e5f09da2a3820d.jpg)
by Duncan Heining
Alan Skidmore is one of the finest saxophonists to come out of the United Kingdom, Europe or indeed anywhere. In fact, it was hearing Skidmore's tenor solo on Have You Heard?" from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (Decca, 1966) that encouraged a young Michael Brecker to take up the instrument. Skidmore had also served his apprenticeship with blues singer Alexis Kornerin the sixties and by the end of the decade was equally well-versed in the blues and in the ...
read moreJohn Taylor Sextet: Fragment
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by Chris May
The not-for-profit Jazz In Britain label is one of the unsung heroes of British jazz. And if it is being sung, apologies, it deserves to be sung louder. While it is fitting that the musicians who make up London's new alternative jazz scene receive a massive shout out, the players who came before them, who paved the way for British jazz's current explosion, tend to get overlooked. Slowly, this is changing, and Jazz In Britain is in ...
read moreExposures
![Read "Exposures" reviewed by John Kelman](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/abf637116b8a535e50541bee7ba5e0ac.jpg)
by John Kelman
Between the impact of the COVID pandemic since 2020, and in the eight year-long tenure of King Crimson's final lineup, which toured between 2014 and 2021, there's been a lot revealed about its sole remaining founding member, guitarist/keyboardist Robert Fripp. Since 2012, the more than five-decade history of King Crimson, live and in the studio, has been painstakingly and exhaustively documented in a series of large multimedia box sets and smaller, more price-friendly editions of key material, often ...
read moreStick Men: Tentacles
![Read "Tentacles" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/7671616211139441ef0924eec3c6709a.jpg)
by Dan McClenaghan
In the early 1960s, before every teenage rock band wanted to be the Beatles, many of them (especially in Southern California) wanted to be the Chantays (1963's Pipeline"), The Surfaris' ("Wipeout" and Point Panic," both from 1963) or Dick Dale and the Deltones ("Miserlou," 1962). Those days were the short-lived peak of surf rock, and it was big. All of those mentioned tunes hit the pop record charts, something that became rare for instrumental music thereafter. For some, these succinct, ...
read moreBeledo: Seriously Deep
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by Chris M. Slawecki
Beledo's second MoonJune release flows through the listener's ears like the cinematic adaptation of an epic novel, but in sound. Seriously Deep quite deliberately moves from scene to scene (song to song), building up and releasing tension in music that sounds much too powerful and deep to have been primarily created by only three musicians: Uruguayan multi-instrumentalist Beledo on electric guitar and acoustic piano with drummer Kenny Grohowski and master bassist Tony Levin. Within each song, this movement consists of ...
read moreKing Crimson: Music is Our Friend: Live In Washington and Albany, 2021
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by John Kelman
You probably know the old adage about assumptions. After seeing the current (slightly fluid) King Crimson lineup twice every time the perennially groundbreaking group made it to North American shores since 2014, with no Canadian dates available in 2021 and the COVID Delta variant running rampant across the United States, the decision was made to forego traveling south to the USA to catch the band. After all, with the band touring, for the first time, on double bills with the ...
read moreWillie Oteri's Jazz Gunn CD project w/ Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Mike Keneally and more.
![Willie Oteri's Jazz Gunn CD project w/ Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Mike Keneally and more.](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/bd38a72ed12128b10ddc05c6087dacb8.jpg)
Source:
All About Jazz
Willie Oteri?s Jazz Gunn CD project with Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Mike Keneally and Ephriam Owen
2/15/02 . Contact Ronan Chris Murhphy 310-200-9010
Tracking for upcoming CD Willie Oteri's JAZZ GUNN, January 3 and 4, 2002
We just finished two wonderful days of tracking at Wire Recording in Austin with Producer Ronan Chris Murphy at the helm assisted by Todd Dillon. The great Tony Levin was on Bass and Pat Mastelotto on Drums plus a little help from Mr. Ephraim ...
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Tony Levin, David Torn and Alan White - Levin Torn White (2011)
![Tony Levin, David Torn and Alan White - Levin Torn White (2011)](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/2010/helpinghands100x100.jpg)
Source:
Something Else!
By Tom Johnson Something keeps pulling guitarist David Torn and bassist Tony Levin together. It's a partnership that blossomed with 1987's Cloud About Mercury, with drummer Bill Bruford and trumpeter Mark Isham, and, for what seemed like an eternity to fans, felt as if it might be a one-off project. In a way, it was. The two would return together in the late 1990s, along with Bruford, with Chris Botti taking Isham's place, this time as Bruford Levin Upper Extremities. ...
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Something Else! Interview: Rock Bassist Tony Levin
![Something Else! Interview: Rock Bassist Tony Levin](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/profile/musician/24ef83781b62c69e6f4a484d4b4108ad.jpg)
Source:
Something Else!
The latest incarnation for bassist Tony Levin, best known for his work with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel, is as part of a fearless new trio album with guitarist David Torn and Yes drummer Alan White. Part prog, part free-form improvisational music, part noise rock, Levin Torn White brings in each of their familiar textures and sounds, yet sounds somehow completely new. Both White and Levin have ties back to John Lennon, with the drummer performing on Live Peace in ...
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Debut Album from Tony Levin, David Torn and Alan White
![Debut Album from Tony Levin, David Torn and Alan White](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/2010/helpinghands100x100.jpg)
Source:
JamBase
SENSATIONAL DEBUT FROM NEW TRIO OF VETERANS Some combinations are truly unique, a breed apart that stretches even known factors into interesting new spaces. This is absolutely the case with Levin Torn White, the debut collaboration of powerhouse, ultra-high-end players Tony Levin (bass, Chapman stick), David Torn (guitars, textural events) and Alan White (drums, percussion). The album, which arrives today on Lazy Bones Recordings, is a fearless rush that's a bit metallic, a bit avant-garde, a bit groovy, hell, a ...
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Upcoming Willie Oteri release with Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Mike Keneally, etc.
![Upcoming Willie Oteri release with Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Mike Keneally, etc.](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/bd38a72ed12128b10ddc05c6087dacb8.jpg)
Source:
All About Jazz