Pete Levin

There may not be another performer quite like keyboardist Pete Levin, who has not only played a wide range of sounds in and out of popular music, but made his mark as a substantial jazz player. Levin was born December 20, 1942, in Boston, and his parents were not musicians but loved music and shared that. His brother is Tony Levin, a renowned jazz and rock electric bass guitarist and master of the Chapman stick, who has also played with many well-known artists. The Levin siblings came up through a public school system in Brookline, MA, that was very supportive of music. Early influences included Julius Watkins, Art Tatum, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Bill Evans, Richard Tee, Herbie Hancock, Billy Preston, Ray Charles, Larry Young, and Jimmy Smith. Pete Levin came into music playing the French horn, and his school department head, John Corley, also directed the concert band at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and played with the MIT band as a ringer for two years. Corley and Osbourne MacConathy, the second horn with the Boston Symphony and conductor with the Sarah Caldwell Opera Company, inspired Levin to enroll at the Juilliard School of Music and begin a professional career. The Levin brothers produced an early claim to fame along with drummer Steve Gadd with the Top 40 hit single "Close to You" by the Clams, a Spike Jones tribute band. Upon moving to New York City in the '70s, he met Gil Evans and recorded and performed with his renowned progressive jazz orchestra for over 15 years, first as a French horn player but eventually on electric keyboards. When Levin brought a Moog synthesizer to a performance at New York's Village Vanguard, Evans embraced the new tone colors. It was then that Levin's role was permanently changed as the big band transformed itself...