Peter Hum

piano

Born and raised in Ottawa, Peter has been a mainstay of the jazz community of Canada’s capital for three decades.

He has released three albums of original modern mainstream jazz, and in 2022, he has so far performed for audiences in not only Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto but also Charlottetown, Antigonish, Kitchener and Vancouver.

Peter’s latest recording, Ordinary Heroes, a collection of 10 compositions that respond to today’s social and political tumult,  was released in 2020 thanks to grants from the Ontario Arts Council and City of Ottawa. Among the acclaim that the album received was a four-star review in DownBeat magazine.

That album features a stellar group of peers including Kenji Omae (tenor saxophone, Antigonish, NS), David Smith (trumpet, Brooklyn, USA), Mike Rud (guitar, Montreal), Alec Walkington (bass, Montreal) and Ted Warren (drums, Guelph, ON). To celebrate the hard-copy release of Ordinary Heroes, Peter and his friends began a tour of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes in March 2020, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, just before the global COVID-19 pandemic brought life and live music to an abrupt halt.

In the works is a piano-duo album that Peter recorded in the fall of 2022 with fellow Ottawa jazz pianist Steve Boudreau. Peter and Steve hope to release their album in 2023, which was supported by a grant from the City of Ottawa, and perform in support of its release.