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Kenji Omae - Peter Hum Quartet

Kenji Omae - tenor saxophone
Peter Hum - piano
Alec Walkington - bass
Valeriy Nehovora

Halifax-based Kenji Omae, a professor of music at St. Francis Xavier University, returns to Ottawa for a rare hometown performance with his long-time friend Peter Hum on piano. The two have been making music together since the early 1990s, when they were just getting their feet wet playing jazz. Joining them at 10,000 Hours will be bassist Alec Walkington, another Ottawa native and a mainstay of live jazz and jazz education in Montreal, plus Valeriy Nehovora, the Ukraine-born drummer who has been a vital part of Ottawa's music scene since he moved here in the mid-2010s.

At 10,000 Hours, the group will play original, dynamic and lyrical music, including selections from Kenji Omae's recently released album Ten Thousand Steps, as well as some of Peter's most recent compositions, which he looks forward to recording for a forthcoming project.

Kenji Omae is a Canadian jazz saxophonist based in Nova Scotia, Canada.  He has been described as "a super-articulate virtuoso" (Peter Hum-The Ottawa Citizen) and "maybe the most exciting tenor saxophonist to emerge in Canada in recent years" (Stuart Broomer-The WholeNote).  He has released four albums of original music as a leader -- Ten Thousand Steps (2023), Story Time (2015), Not So Deep (2011) and Here For Now (2007), featuring some of the best jazz musicians in New York and Toronto. In addition to his own recordings, he is featured as a sideman on over 30 jazz CDs. From 2003 to 2017, the Ottawa native was based in Seoul, South Korea as a full-time instructor of saxophone (Dong-Ah Institute Of Media And Arts and Paek-Che Art College). In 2007, he won the first prize in the Jarasum International Jazz Festival competition.

Peter Hum has been a mainstay of Ottawa's jazz scene since the early 1990s. He has released three well-regarded albums as a leader, including Ordinary Heroes (2020), which received a four-star review in DownBeat magazine. Self-taught as a jazz pianist, he considers himself very fortunate to have performed with such Canadian greats as Pat LaBarbera, Reg Schwager, Phil Nimmons and Sonny Greenwich. In recent years, he has performed his music in top jazz venues from Vancouver to Charlottetown, frequently collaborating with local musicians. His recordings and touring have been supported by the City of Ottawa's Creation and Production Fund, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition to his musical pursuits, Peter has been a journalist at the Ottawa Citizen since 1990.