Julia Feldman

Julia Feldman (Hebrew: יוליה פלדמן‎, Russian: Юлия Фельдман; born June 22, 1979 in Samara, Soviet Union) is an Israeli jazz vocalist, composer and educator. Her singing combines elements of multiple jazz genres, free improvisation and modern classical music.

Early life and education

Feldman was born in Samara into a family with a large musical background- her grandfather, Solomon Feldman, was an accomplished conductor and a leader of the city philharmonic orchestra and her father, Ilya Feldman, while being a jewellery designer, also plays jazz piano. She had been classically trained by studying the piano from the age of 5 till the family's immigration to Israel in 1990. The family resided in Jerusalem, where she continued her classical piano studies with Anatoly Tartakovsky along with jazz improvisation studies with the composer and a saxophone player Stephen Horenstein in the music department of the High School Of Arts in Jerusalem.

In the last year of her high school studies Feldman became interested in jazz singing, and in 1997 she began studying voice technique and jazz improvisation with Israeli jazz vocalist Iris Portugaly along with intensive studies of jazz with the saxophonist Arnie Lawrence at the International Music Center of Jerusalem. At the Center, Julia had the opportunity to study and perform with known Americal jazz musicians, such as Evelyn Blakey, Larry Goldings, Armen Donelian, Bob Meyer, Sheila Jordan, Judi Silvano and the composer Allen Gershwin, to name a few. Feldman was also invited to perform Allen Gershwin's composition "Walk in the wilderness" on a tribute concert dedicated to his father, the known composer George Gershwin.