Press
Representative Media Coverage & Reviews
The Jazz Review
“His improvisations weave in and out various thematic forways, spiced up with heaps and bounds of intuitive dialogues and subplots"
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"Levin demonstrates a wider musical vocabulary than that afforded by many contemporaries of the improvisational music genre."
Cadence
"Levin plays a big-toned tenor out of the Coltrane school though his approach is very lyrical."
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"Ike Levin demonstrates a sensitivity to and obvious knowledge of the free jazz landscape."
All About Jazz
“Soulful tenor phrases that move in and out of blistering cries and wails."
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"Levin speaks authoritatively on tenor...free from phrases erupt convincingly from his horn only to be calmed by ensuing gentle currents of melodiousness."
All Music Guide
"Ike Levin's big Texas tenor sound is filtered by the lens of post-modernism, but there is lyricism too, inherent in his playing is a reminiscent of the great swing and early bop soloists."
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"A saxophonist who shows comfort and intuitive playing at home in the genre of collective improvisation."
Jazz Times
“Levin is an intense, expressive player. His asymmetrical phrasing and extensive use of pentatonic scales and intervallic melodies place him firmly under the ghostly wing of John Coltrane circa 1967."
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“Readily morphs from free blowing into soulful, bluesy phrasing.”
One Final Note
"Levin shows adeptness in winding through the pianisms of Futterman sometimes answering in call and response or choosing to just float above."
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"Ike Levin does not use a large arsenal of saxophone techniques. Instead, it comes down to his choices of the notes he plays. And it MAKES SENSE--It Fits."
Signal To Noise
"Levin demonstrates an able command of jazz-based balladry and vocabulary."
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"What is evident is his ability to easily and naturally move in and out of idiomatic playing--or rather, from one idiom (relatively straight-ahead jazz) to another (free jazz) as if they were the most natural bedfellows."
East Bay Express
"According to Ike Levin, abstract highly improvisational brand of jazz is music that's trying to veer away from things that have been done before. Or cling to musical cliches. But as he notes it’s not really free because you don't just play anything. Actually, there is an intentional structure to it"
Ga-Zeta
"A strong, resourceful player who displays an inventive reservoir of musical ideas."
Jazz Word
"Levin shifts effortlessly between high octave multi-phonics into an almost Gene Ammonesque referenced bluesy motif..."
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“An improvisor at the top of his game… jazzed cries and altissimo squeals interspersed with lyrical and melodic asides…”
Squid Co
"Levin shifts effortlessly between high octave multi-phonics into an almost Gene Ammonesque referenced bluesy motif..."
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“An improvisor at the top of his game… jazzed cries and altissimo squeals interspersed with lyrical and melodic asides…”