LA Born New York City resident, Victor Gould started his journey with the piano at the tender age of four. Since then, he has performed and recorded with a variety of A-listers, including Esperanza Spalding, Terence Blanchard, Branford Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, the late Ralph Peterson, Wallace Roney, and many others.
He is one of the first-ever recipients of the Herbie Hancock Presidential Scholarship at Berklee College of Music. After finishing his bachelor’s degree studied at the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at Loyola University, completing a Master’s in Music. His accolades include the 2009 ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award and the 2006 semi-finalist in The Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition. Victor’s debut album, Clockwork was voted number 1 debut Jazz album in NPR Music’s 2016 Jazz Critics Poll.
His latest album, entitled ‘About In Our Time’ with bassist Tamir Shmerling and drummer Anwar Marshall is a reflective project that celebrates life and the opportunity to be present at the same time as master teachers and mentors of the craft. In Our Time Gould sees the exemplary Trio pays homage to two late greats, recently departed: trumpeter Wallace Roney (“Lord Wallace”) and drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr. (“Dear Ralph”). This is in addition to the album’s one solo piano cut, the beautiful waltz “Queen Alma,” is dedicated to Gould’s late grandmother (and by extension the younger of his two daughters, who shares a middle name in common).
“I was a member of Wallace’s band for four years,” says Gould, “and we made the album Understanding. He had such a big impact on my life, hiring me right after I moved to New York.” In addition to years of small-group work, Gould held the piano chair in Roney’s large ensemble, which premiered the long-lost Wayne Shorter opus “Universe” in 2013. Peterson, for his part, was one of Gould’s professors at Berklee and asked the pianist to join his band during freshman year. “I played on his record The Duality Perspective a few years after that,” Gould notes. “He was a mentor who became a true friend. He invited me to his house for Thanksgiving dinner when he knew I was in the dorms and couldn’t go home. He was also a brilliant composer who influenced me in a lot of ways with specific devices, things that were iconic and unique. In the take of ‘Dear Ralph’ that we used, Anwar plays a very noticeable Ralph lick right at the top, so there’s no way we couldn’t put his name on it.”
The album is available on September 24, 2021, on all streaming platforms.
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