New York, NY (Top40 Charts) This past Sunday, Steven Feifke brought home the GRAMMY Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble album. It is a historic first-time win for Feifke, who becomes the youngest ever winner in the category's six decade existence. No one — not Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Count Basie,
Dizzy Gillespie — won it sooner.
"What an incredible honor," Feifke stated in his acceptance speech. "Thank you so much to the Recording Academy, to all of our peers and friends in the audience tonight. This album for us is truly a mission of celebrating and showcasing generational diversity and I'm so proud to be here with my mentor and collaborator on this project, Bijon Watson."
The GRAMMY award is for Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra's self-titled debut album, released in
September 2022 via Cellar
Music Group and La Reserve Records. On Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, Steven Feifke and his co-leader trumpet titan Bijon Watson lead a vibrant ensemble with nearly five decades of musicians represented, including Kurt Elling, Sean Jones, Alexa Tarantino, Mike Rodriguez, Roxy Coss, and more. Feifke and Watson's shared vision for the ensemble is to strengthen that tradition of mentorship which has shaped and defined the jazz idiom since its earliest beginnings.
Feifke received this high honor and historic achievement during an incredibly prolific period for the artist. Having released six albums in the past two years, Feifke shows no signs of stopping with the upcoming release of Catalyst, out June 16th via La Reserve. At just 31 years old, the bandleader, composer, and arranger has built an astonishing musical resume, having appeared on over forty records to date. DownBeat has called his music "an air of infectious joy" while Jazziz has praised him as a "masterful pianist." His 2021 record Kinetic propelled Feifke's name among lists of top-tier contemporary big band leaders, and he further cemented that status with the 2022 intimate trio release The Role of the Rhythm Section.
Feifke's compositions and orchestrations have also been prominently featured on hit TV shows such as The Masked Singer, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Impractical Jokers, Animaniacs, and more. A respected educator, Feifke currently sits on faculty at Berklee College of
Music and The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music.
