Levingston, Leslie

Bardin Levavy is a graduate of Harvard Law School, The Johns Hopkins University, and New York University.  He was admitted to practice in New York in 1968 and in New Jersey in 1975.

Mr. Levavy has had a varied career.  Primarily a business attorney, counseling clients on business forms and negotiating and drafting business contracts, he has simultaneously maintained a practice in estate planning and administration.  His two primary practice fields are complemented by experience in representing musicians, music publishers, composers, and motion picture producers.

The final segment of Mr. Levavy’s practice, which he views as adjunct to his business practice, is the establishment and tax qualification of not-for-profit corporations.  Indeed, in 1970 he formed one of the first corporations under the New York Not-for-Profit Corporation Law and developed a form for the Certificate of Participation authorized by the statute which, as far as he knows, is still in use today.

Mr. Levavy’s career has taken some interesting turns.  While he does not litigate, he nevertheless tried a right-to-die case in 1987, some time before New Jersey passed a statute authorizing Health Care Proxies (the preparation of which is part of his estate planning practice).

Similarly, he has represented the motion producer Harry Saltzman, who was co-Producer of the James Bond motion pictures (through THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN) and the French producer Serge Silberman, who was Luis Bunuel’s producer.  Mr. Levavy was particularly active in the distribution agreements for THE DISCRETE CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1973 and THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE, both directed by Luis Bunuel.

Mr. Levavy has taken an active hand in civic artistic and recreational affairs.  He was a charter member of Arts Maplewood, the Maplewood, New Jersey Arts Commission until 2011.  At present, he is the longest serving member of Maplewood’s Recreation Advisory Committee and the President of Friends of Maplewood Recreation, Inc., a non-profit corporation which he incorporated and tax-qualified,.

But classical music is the great love of Mr. Levavy’s life.  He has represented record producers, music publishers, pianists, and violinists and is an occasional advisor to young musicians, particularly in such matters as recording and management agreements.  Upon the death of his parents and a close friend, he commissioned the American composer Kenji Bunch to write PSALM SETTINGS, a multi-movement work for string quartet and mezzo-soprano which had its world premiere at Carnegie Recital Hall in February, 2005.

Mr. Levavy has a reading knowledge of French and some Italian.