Federico "Fred" Diaz Elizalde was a Spanish Filipino classical and jazz pianist, composer, conductor, and bandleader, influential in the British dance band era.
15 Facts About Fred Elizalde
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Fred Elizalde was a brother of diplomat Joaquin, Manuel, Juan Miguel, Angel and Carmenchu Elizalde.
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Fred Elizalde then studied at St Joseph's College, London and went to study law at Stanford University in the 1920s.
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Fred Elizalde took composition lessons under Ernst Bloch at Stanford, and gave up law temporarily for music, leaving the school in 1926.
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Fred Elizalde then embarked on a career as a jazz bandleader, leading the Stanford University Band at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, while he studied composition.
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Fred Elizalde recorded with the Cinderella Roof Orchestra in 1926, then returned to England, where he entered Cambridge University in the autumn as a law student.
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Fred Elizalde criticized British dance music for its Viennese qualities, and sought to bring more American principles of rhythm to the British scene.
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Fred Elizalde recorded with his band in 1927 under several ensemble names for Brunswick and Decca, including the Cambridge Undergraduates.
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Fred Elizalde conducted orchestras in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
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Fred Elizalde broke up his band in 1929, after a poorly received tour in Scotland and the onset of the Great Depression, which necessitated the return home of many of his American sidemen.
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Fred Elizalde led a new group at the Duchess Theater in London in 1930, but later that year returned to Manila to accept a position as conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
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Fred Elizalde conducted in the 1930s in Biarritz, Paris, and Madrid, and recorded for the last time in 1933 on a brief return trip to Britain.
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Fred Elizalde set to music Titeres de Cachiporra and Don Perlimplin by Federico Garcia Lorca, with whom he was closely associated.
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Fred Elizalde first emigrated to Manila then moved to France, where he lived under confinement in a house near Bayonne under the German occupation.
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Fred Elizalde did some conducting in Japan, and led the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall during the Festival of Britain in 1951, but otherwise did little work outside the Philippines through until his 1974 retirement.