After more than three decades of silence, composer Alonzo Levister is making his return to the music scene. His composing, arranging, and orchestrating skills were well known and highly respected in the recording industry, Jazz, and Broadway Musical circles. He is one of the great American music talents of the 20th centrury, with a unique blend of classical and jazz idioms created in his double-bill of Oper'd Jazz and Jazz'd Opera - "2 FOR LOVE"

Poised for success via Broadway Producers Phillip Rose, David Merrick, Frank Loesser; E.B. Marks and Big Three (MGM) Music Publishers; arranger / producer at Motown/Jobete Music - NYC; an opera with the author of the hit play Raisin in the Sun; writing for Mingus and Miles, and "Touch Love" recorded by Johnny Hodges (Rippin' & Runnin' on Verve Records), also the CLIO Gold Award - Best Musical Theme of 1963 for ("Fur") Prell Shampoo, Benbon and Bowles agency. Then, he stopped.

DAN MORGENSTERN, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University

"After 20 years of writing every kind of music, including symphonic, opera, musicals, jazz & commercial jingles, on the verge of success, something inside me said run like hell - the other way! I did. I became an expat in Tahiti. while living there teaching and writing, I was inspired to write "Tahiti Girl", recorded by the amazing pianist Roy Meriwether (available on CD Baby "Xtension"). Additionally, I worked on an opera "Slave Song" (originally written with libretto by the late Oscar Brown Jr. and performed at Howard University in the early 70s)."

Levister's musical activites have run the gamut form playing piano in Paris, Mexico city and Los Angeles, to a five year stint as a writer, arranger, and producer in New York City for such recording companies as Capitol and MGM - Verve. (Levister has devoted his time to musical theater, most recently as composer, lyricist and book writer of "Cerenoduhberzuhrac, man!" (Cyrano de Bergerac), "Slave Song", a blues opera, and "G Flat", a Charlie Parker jazz drama.

Alonzo Levister was raised in New York City, studied at Boston Conservatory, in Paris, and at Julliard, and was offered a scholarship to Brandeis University. His first album, Manhattan Monodrama, was issued by Mingus' Debut Records and features the tune "Slow Dance" which was later recorded by John Coltrane and can be heard on many of his albums e.g. "Traneing In". Levister was also the subject of an article in TIME magazine and is listed in Leonard Feathers' Encyclopedia of Jazz.

"Now, hopefully, I'm wise enough for any success to not kill me, like it did to so many others I've known or known of."

Besides, I'm too old to die of success.

My latest album on CD baby, "Jazzanova" is a Jazz/Bossa Nova/Blues Fusion of music meant to soothe the ear and calm the soul, and includes Lower 9th Ward Lowdown Blues (A Song for Katrina)."
Alonzo Levister