1. Victor Stanley Feldman was an English jazz musician who played mainly piano, vibraphone, and percussion.
17 Facts About Victor Feldman
1. 2.
Victor Feldman began performing professionally during childhood, eventually earning acclaim in the UK jazz scene as an adult.
3.
Victor Feldman caused a sensation as a musical prodigy when he was "discovered", aged seven.
4.
Victor Feldman's family were all musical and his father founded the Feldman Swing Club in London in 1942 to showcase his talented sons.
5.
Victor Feldman performed from a young age: "from 1941 to 1947 he played drums in a trio with his brothers; when he was nine he took up piano and when he was 14 started playing vibraphone".
6.
Victor Feldman featured in the films King Arthur Was a Gentleman and Theatre Royal.
7.
Victor Feldman "took a prominent role in the musical Piccadilly Hayride".
8.
Victor Feldman played with Sharon from late 1949 to 1951, including performances in Switzerland.
9.
Victor Feldman played with Parry in the UK from October 1953 to January 1954.
10.
Victor Feldman was a notable percussionist, but it was as a pianist and vibraphone player that he became best known.
11.
Victor Feldman had frequent return trips to the UK over the following years.
12.
Victor Feldman recorded with many jazz artists, including Benny Goodman, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis, most notably on Davis' 1963 album Seven Steps to Heaven, the title tune being his own composition.
13.
Davis invited Victor Feldman to join his group full-time, but Victor Feldman declined, preferring the stability of studio work to the career of a touring musician.
14.
The 5-CD Shelly Manne Black Hawk set, originally released on LP in September 1959, is a good representation of Victor Feldman's unmistakable driving comping behind the soloists, helping to define the session as a valuable hard bop genre element.
15.
Victor Feldman branched out to work with a variety of musicians outside of jazz, recording with artists such as Frank Zappa in 1967, Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell in the 1970s and Tom Waits and Joe Walsh in the 1980s.
16.
Victor Feldman appears on all seven Steely Dan albums released in the 1970s and 1980 in the band's first incarnation.
17.
Victor Feldman died of a heart attack in 1987 at his home in Los Angeles, aged 53, following an asthma attack.