Steven Feifke

Steven Feifke, a pianist, arranger, and educator, combines skill as a jazz improviser with leadership of ensembles. Emerging during the 2010s, he claimed the Grammy for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album at the youngest age on record when Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra earned the honor in 2022.

Lexington, Massachusetts, marked his birthplace in 1991. Piano lessons began at age four under his mother’s guidance, and rapid advancement led him to jazz studies while enrolled at Lexington High School and the New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory School. He later pursued jazz and economics at NYU, then completed a Master of Music in Jazz Composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Recognition arrived early through the David Baker Prize at the Ravinia Music Festival and two semifinalist placements at the Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition. In addition to performance, he holds faculty positions at the Berklee College of Music and The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music while delivering lectures at Yale University, New York University, and Northern Illinois University.

His first solo recording, the 2015 septet album Peace in Time, included trumpeter Benny Benack III, saxophonists Andrew Gould and Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, guitarist Alex Wintz, bassist Raviv Markovitz, and drummer Jimmy Macbride. A second collaboration with Benack produced the holiday-oriented big-band project Season's Swinging Greetings in 2019.

Kinetic arrived the same year as his second large-ensemble outing, again spotlighting Benack and Gould alongside vocalist Veronica Swift. Feifke supplied arrangements for Swift’s 2021 release This Bitter Earth. His third big-band album, Generation Gap Jazz Orchestra, appeared in 2022 and featured trumpeter Bijon Watson plus contributions from Kurt Elling, Sean Jones, Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, and additional artists. The recording secured the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, establishing Feifke—at 31—as the youngest recipient of that prize.