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NORMAN LEVINE ANECDOTE PAGE

Norman Levine affected many of us during his long life.
If you have a Norman Levine anecdote or remember some way he affected you or someone you know, please click the button at the bottom of this page and add yours to this list.

Wow! Norman, you touched so many lives, not the least of which are the children at John Beck Elementary School After School Program. You brought music into our program, funding the Mandolin Club, which is now in it's third year. Your goal was to bring the mandolin to public schools in the United States, and you have succeeded. Thank you for that. Our young children, ages 6 to 9 years old, have learned the history of the mandolin and are getting a real appreciation of music. You've touched the next generation! If "Providence" allows, it will remain a part of the orchestra curriculum permanently.

Rest in peace, we love you.

Dianna Engle, Asst. Group Supervisor, John Beck ASK Program, Lititz, PA

Norman Levine spent most of his life promoting Mandolin. He was the founder of CMSA, an agent and promoter for Howard Frye, Gertrud Weyhofen, and many others, a music publisher & a record label. He maintained a retail Mandolin centered music business (Plucked String Inc. & later Best Music Source Inc.) that stocked and sold retail sheet music, music books, CD & LP recordings, and helped to fund Plucked String Foundation Inc., a not for profit corporation that provided funds for numerous Mandolin artists and their endeavors.

To this day I hear stories of Mandolinists, teachers and schools that benefited from his funding, and his deep desire to help the cause of Mandolin awareness and promotion in as many ways as he could possibly afford.

I was personally privileged to benefit from not only Norman's funding, but from a close correspondence with him over many years. His council was always aimed at guiding me in what he knew to be the best path for CMSA and Mandolin. Even when we were in heated disagreement, I always knew his heart to be pure and selfless in what he told me.

The CMSA awarded Norman with a 'Lifetime Achievement Award' at this year's convention in Sarasota, Florida, and I was privileged to present it. The text read:

“In grateful recognition for a lifetime of contribution to the Mandolin family of instruments.
Your dedication and sacrifice are a continuing inspiration to all who love the Mandolin.
We acknowledge the superb example you have provided to those who follow in your life’s passion.”

Norman has set a high bar for those of us who believe in this wonderful instrument. I hope that we will all find a way to follow his example in our own lives. Norman had that most important part of life figured out. May he rest in peace knowing that his life caused a far reaching impact of good in this world. He will be missed in more ways than any of us will ever know.

Sincerely,

Bruce Graybill
President of the Classical Mandolin Society of America Inc.

Norman and I were good friends dating back to 1960. We talked by telephone at least once a month. My wife and I often had him to our house for dinner. The last time I hear from him he was going into the hospital for another series of tests. I called several times in December to see how he was doing and only got his answering machine. I called yesterday and his telephone had been disconnected. I finally called Beverly Frye who told me he had passed away. No one had told me of his death so, much to my regret, we missed his funeral. Norman was a very warm and generous man and we loved him very much.

Norman, you want to know something? (Norman's favorite conversational interjection) We will miss you but you will continue to live in our hearts and I will miss your wicked sense of humor and our never ending kidding each other.

So long, pal.

Bob and Helen Guest

I first made contact with Norman in 1983, when I was at university in London, and starting to research the history of the mandolin. From the start I enjoyed corresponding with him, at first about the mandolin, but gradually about politics, philosophy, history, and life in general. Once we'd both acquired fax machines, our exchanges became more frequent, and once e-mail came along, we maintained regular contact.

His enthusiasm for the mandolin (and for everything he turned his hand to) always impressed me, and when we finally met, I realised that he was larger than life in every sense. He'd clearly had a very successful business career in the 1950s and 60s, living in France and Belgium and speaking many languages with enviable proficiency (he attributed that to having grown up in a poor ethnically-diverse part of New York), but Plucked String and the CMSA were his great enthusiasms from about 1980 onwards (he even published one of my mandolin books, and distributed the others). After 9/11, we corresponded a lot about the political situation too, and it was enlightening for me (and I hope for him) to see how my European view of the world coincided with (and sometimes differed from) his American outlook.

I only just found out that he'd died (although his silence over the past two months had made me fear the worst), so these are just my first semi-formed thoughts about the loss of someone I'd come to admire and like over some twenty-five years. I have a very elderly St Bernard dog (a breed that Howard Frye was very fond of), and Norman and I sometimes used to wonder whether she would outlive him, or vice versa. Well Norman, it seems that you crossed the finishing line first (though I fear the dog won't be far behind). You were one of the good guys, and I'll often think of you with great affection.

RIP,

Paul Sparks (UK)

Norman was a very generous and enthusiastic man. His Plucked String Foundation awarded three mandolins to our program at Cleveland High School in Reseda, California. We are most appreciative.

He also encouraged me to write a jazz and blues column for the Mandolin Quarterly. It as a pleasure to know and to work with him. He alway had time to talk about music and the mandolin, and there were few people who had such broad and
deep knowledge of the subject. I will miss him.

I never had the good fortune to meet Norman in person. Yet he and I spoke a few times by phone, in my "earlier life", while I was still a concert manager. Judging (or rather misjudging) by the verve and vigor of his voice, his effervescent enthusiasm and excitement about the mandolin, I mistook him to be a good 40 years younger than he really was. What boundless energy this otherwise soft-spoken, gentle man had!

Norman was a visionary, no doubt, but also a man of practical wisdom: he knew full well what we were up against in our effort to revive the classical mandolin in America. Alas, the many things that he and I discussed remained without the follow-up that we had wished for: his health got in the way, I left arts management to devote more time to composing --for the mandolin, of course!-- and thus our best intentions passed each other proverbially, like two ships in the night. His spirit, however, endures, and inspires us all to pursue all the possibilities that lie ahead of us. For once, what seemed like the wildest of dreams at the inception of the CMSA, is now clearly within reach. We have Norman to thank for getting us from where we were then to where we are now.

I will miss his charming, clipped phrasing, generous laughter, and frequent exclamations...

Victor Kioulaphides

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