| He’s played with Sonny Rollins, Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. He’s a long time student of Indian classical music under Ali Akbar Khan. At 21 he built the stage mixer used for Woodstock 1968, and went on to create some of hi-fi’s landmark designs. And he was married to Kim Cattrall, with whom he co-wrote Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm. Just who does Mark Levinson think he is?, asks David Flynn...
Sound+Image: Much has been written about your love of jazz, but what other music are you interested in?
Mark Levinson: My biggest passion for 40 years has been North Indian classical music. I study it and play it, and it really knocks me out. I was already a professional jazz musician when I discovered North Indian classical music; I’d been on tour with Paul Bley in Europe for nine months in 1966, but I felt something was missing. As a present my grandmother gave me a recording of Ravi Shankar — I heard that and went “Wow, this is interesting!”. Then I bought a record of Ali Akbar Khan, and after a few years I called the Indian Embassy in New York and said “I want to study with Ali Akbar Khan, how do I get a hold of him?”. It turned out he was already in the United States, he was teaching in California! So I went out there and studied and got to know him.
S+I: So why did you end up playing the double bass, which is one of music’s most unwieldy instruments?
ML: The first instrument I learned was the cornet, then I switched to the flugelhorn later on. The flugelhorn is my first and foremost instrument. But a lot of the time in a jazz band, everybody was around except the bass player, so I figured if I learned to play the bass I could get into sessions. Actually I’ve been playing North Indian classical music on the bass for so many years that I wouldn’t even consider myself a jazz bass player any more. And I don’t play professionally any more, there’s not much time for it.
S+I: Your father was a jazz enthusiast: did he play an instrument?
ML: No, but he could remember and sing an entire symphony, although he couldn’t sing a note in tune! My mother played the cello, and that’s why I named my second company Cello. In fact after 60 years of not playing, she’s recently started playing the cello again, at age 90!
S+I: What was your first musical “break” — the turning point that put you on the path from amateur to professional?
ML: I guess the turning point was that I dropped out of college! I went to New York, started hanging out and playing jazz and met the pianist Paul Bley, who is a very very great jazz piano player. Paul offered me a job, to go on tour with him in Europe for nine months. I was Paul’s bass player for four years. Paul was a highly inventive and creative jazz player... along with Bill Evans, who was more about the standards and conventional chords, they were the two pianists from which came Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, that whole school. And from those guys came all the younger guys.
S+I: Most audiophiles agree that it was John Curl’s JC-2 that put Mark Levinson Audio Systems on the map. Would you agree?
ML: Well the JC-2 was just a straight-line pre-amp, basically input and volume and a couple of switches, but it was very high quality. I think what really put the company on the map was the LNP-2 pre-amp, which was before the JC-2. People said maybe we’d sell ten, but we sold thousands. Think about a dynamic range of 140dB. Think about accuracy to 0.1dB on all settings, all dials, all knobs. Think about VU meters with a peak hold capable of capturing the first quarter of a 20kHz waveform. Nobody today can do that, and we were doing that back in 1974. It was an unbelievable accomplishment. Today an LNP-2, if you can find one, usually sells for more than the new price back then. And they still work to factory specifications.
S+I: How are Red Rose products different from those branded Mark Levinson or Cello?
ML: Mark Levinson was the first step, and the idea was to use high quality parts and circuits to make better sound and better quality. Cello was designed to really explore the stratosphere, but in those days we were limited somewhat by the technology that was available, and I suppose by our own knowledge as well. Cello was really complicated and sophisticated, and I decided it didn’t have to be like that, that there must be a way to make it simpler and more affordable. So I started down that path with Red Rose. The idea of Red Rose was to try to make the best sound more affordable, more simple, more compact.
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