After I picked myself up off the floor, I made sure to ask for an interview. Mr. Levin graciously agreed, and the results are below. The good news is Todd Levin is a real guy. The bad news is... well, everything else if you enjoy his music.

iconmaster: Just what have you been doing since DeLuxe was released in 1995? It seemed like you went into hiding there for a while.

Todd Levin: Not "hiding." I just never wanted to be a "career" composer – it didn't interest me. There are other things I enjoy doing more on a daily basis than writing music. Nor did I want to compose music in order to earn money. There are other ways I'd rather earn money.

i: How have your views on classical music and the world of classical music changed or matured since DeLuxe?

TL: I would say my views on classical music and the world of classical music have not changed/matured substantively. Classical contemporary music is, on the whole, less interesting to me than it was 10-15 years ago, though there always are individual exceptions.

i: You said in Todd Levin that you didn't want to influence history. However, I think you probably did in some way. Do you feel like critics and fellow composers have come around to your point of view somewhat? Now that you're older, do you still find yourself wanting to "push the boundaries" in music?

TL: I said what I meant. As to critics and fellow composers, I wouldn't know what they're thinking, as I haven't really spoken to anyone in the contemporary classical music world in over five years.

i: You also said that classical music needs to "climb down from its parochial pedestal and throw off the artistic aurora." Do you think classical music can compete for attention in today's digital culture? Does it need to? What should it do to stay relevant?

TL: I think that in the most basic terms, comtemporary classical music is as impotent (or more so) than it was 10-15 years ago, in terms of its ability to impact culture in any meaningful way. There are individual exceptions, but I'm talking broad generalities.

i: Do you think this is a trend we ought to be trying to reverse, or should we just accept that classical music is not really a "fit" in contemporary culture?

TL: Why would one desire to be involved in an art form one believes to be impotent, and unable to make a significant cultural contribution to the arts community as a whole? I think I stated this as clearly as possible in the text of Todd Levin (DG Ultramix) on DeLuxe.

i: Are you working on any music projects right now, or looking ahead to any?

TL: I always revolve ideas in my head, but I do this for my own personal delectation only.

i: What other composers or musicians would you consider to be successfully covering some of the same ground that you've been covering (figuring out what "classical" music should sound like today)?

TL: The last group of composers who created their own musical language were the minimalists such as Glass and Reich. Adams has extended this musical approach successfully by packaging this music better than any other "post-minimalist."

i: It's probably hard to make a living off composition these days unless you hit it big as a film composer. What kind of work are you doing instead of music?

TL: I'm a curator of Post War and Contemporary Art, and have been doing this before either DeLuxe or Ride The Planet was released. I've been involved in the Post War and Contemporary Art market as a buyer/seller for almost thirty years.

i: That's great work, and I'm glad you enjoy it. But isn't contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music? Consider how many people will buy and listen to Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings soundtrack or just about anything by John Williams, and compare that to the number of people who visit modern art galleries. You might argue that soundtracks are too populist to count as true "classical" music, but once you take the movie out of the equation I'm not sure of any empirical test that could neatly divide those categories. To put it another way: isn't it the responsibility of the artist, rather than the medium, to inject the cultural potency that you feel is missing in classical music today?

TL: Your assumption, viz. "...contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music.." is sadly, incredibly mistaken.

Go to a major international art fair such as Basel Miami Beach, and look at the crowds. Look at the prices being paid. Look at who shows up to be seen – anyone who is anyone in the fields of the Arts, Business, Sports, Popular Culture, etc. The immediate cultural influence is overwhelmingly massive. Young artists are sexed up for the pages of such magazines such as Vogue, WWD, GQ, and Esquire, and the results of major auctions when record prices are set is seen immediately on Bloomberg News, CNBC, MSNBC, and any/every major paper/web page. Your comment shows a total ignorance of the contemporary art scene [iconmaster note: He's not wrong], and more importantly the market mechanism.

Art can be quantified, therefore, it can be bought and sold, and therefore, a market economy which is impossible for classical music exists behind it. Global music sales (including digital music sales) were just under $20 billion in 2008, down for the tenth consecutive year in a row – but remember (and this is important) classical (or 'fine art music) sales make up only about 2% (!) of that total amount. Global fine art sales are probably around $40 billion dollars, and have increased every year for the past ten years, with Post War and Contemporary Art being the largest portion of that total.

Contemporary Art has an immediate cultural impact on people's lives today in a way that it never has in the past – artists such as Jeff Koons are rock stars (not classical stars) in their own right, with all the attending cultural awareness and adulation. Contemporary classical music once had that power – at the end of the 19th Century (think Wagner) – but has allowed itself to be marginalized and rendered impotent.

That's why someone like Philip Glass is important. His early work not only created a new language, but he also took on the responsibility of creating his audience and inserting himself wherever possible into the wider cultural milieu. Interestingly, do you know why PG became the cultural phenomenon he now is? Because of the support of the visual arts community – they basically 'made' him.

i: Finally, what do you think are the essential components of a good work of music?

TL: It's like pornography – "I know it when I hear (see) it."

This liner note, from the Deutsche Grammophon's 1995 release of De Luxe, is the last clue we have as to the whereabouts of the composer Todd Levin. After that, the composer seems to have dropped out of music entirely. Over a decade later, the internet barely acknowledges his existence. I had to resort to scanning my liner notes just to get an obscured photo of the guy.

A website for (apparently) a Stanford radio station is one of the few places to find a review of Levin's music: "this New York (by way of Detroit) composer's latest album will be reviled by most fans of classical music (modern and traditional alike) as well as by [Deutsche Grammophon's] presumed intended target audience of young hipsters. That leaves those who appreciate irony, camp, and audacity, not to mention orchestral music with a backbeat."

If you know anything about me, you have already plugged me into that last sentence.

I am generally suspicious of folks who claim deep connections to particular pieces of music. The teen in his bedroom who's convinced Coldplay's latest single is the theme of his tumultuous suburban life; the couple who note when "their song" comes on the radio. Music is written by real people in historical contexts; claiming a work you enjoy as completely your own seems to me an attempt to strip the thing of much of what makes it worthwhile in the first place.

But in Todd Levin's compositions I sense an artist aiming at something bigger. He wants to tap into the larger context of modern human life. (I should say "postmodern" here, but that sounds too pretentious.) Like modern life, his music is frenetic, disjointed and often confusing. It reflects a hodgepodge of cultural influences, and draws on them haphazardly. It is at turns beautiful and violent, and it's always being driven forward by the tyranny of the mechanical clock (or metronome).

It is, in a word, brilliant.

Help me bring this talented composer out of hiding. You can sample his music [July 28 update: samples are gone now, bummer], or get in touch with me if you'd like to hear the complete works (this isn't stuff you can buy on iTunes or at your local record store). You can also become a fan of the Todd Levin Facebook page.

This week Sony's increasingly random flailings in the digital music realm have snagged it a partnership with Nokia, wherein users of Nokia phones will receive free music for a whole year on, presumably, someone's dime other than their own. (Though I'd be not at all shocked to see Nokia up its prices to cover the cost -- a Sony BMG tax, if you will.)

If I were feeling particularly mean, I'd suggest that this is actually an attempt by Sony to offload some "excess inventory" -- really, is anyone still buying Britney Spears at this point? The Dixie Chicks? Ricky Martin? But as fate would have it, I'm only feeling slightly mean -- mean enough to revisit Sony's storied history of failure in the realm of digital music.

Sony was once the king of personal music devices. Its Walkman cassette players dominated the industry for roughly twenty years -- an unthinkable run for a consumer electronics product these days. And the Discman CD players that followed did just fine too. But Sony was utterly unprepared for the digital music revolution. Sony took two years after the iPod's debut to intro its Network Walkman digital music player -- and then made the fatal decision of ditching MP3 support in order to emphasize its own ATRAC music format.

Today, the iPod defines portable digital music. Sony's efforts barely constitute a footnote.

Of course, the devices are just one part of the equation. You also need a music distribution mechanism, and Apple's is iTunes. Sony tried to fill this gap for its own players with the Sony Connect music store -- an endeavor so successful that in five days from this posting Sony is shuttering it completely.

Sony seems to have finally decided that the best it can do is to give its music away. But don't think for a second that the Masters of Rootkit have seen the light about giving consumers control over their music. (If you were thinking that, allow me a chortle at your expense.) This "free" music being provided to Nokia's customers will be DRMed out the wazoo: "The 'Comes with music' library will be transferable to PCs and to a new Nokia handheld; however, users won’t be able to transfer it to certain non-compatible devices, such as iPods." There's one way to enforce those kinds of limitations, and it's not through the honor system.

What's really insidiously ingenious about this plan is that casual use of the singular: "a new Nokia handheld." Not, notably, new Nokia handhelds you might purchase in the future. So what happens after you've spent a year downloading your "free" Sony BMG songs and decide you'd like a spiffy new Nokia device? Does the "Comes with music" library come with you? Nobody's saying... and silence in the realm of DRM restrictions is almost never a good thing.

On the surface, Sony BMG and Nokia are promising a lot of free music -- and who can say no to that? But "never a free lunch" is a cliché for good reason. Sony intends to get its payday here somehow, and they've already proven they really don't care what they have to do to get it.