JAZZ EVENING: PETER SOMUAH GROUP (Ghana/Netherlands)

Peter Somuah – trumpet, bandleader, composer
Anton de Bruin – keyboards
Marijn van de Ven – bass
Jens Meijer – drums
Danny Rombout – percussion

Originally from Accra in Ghana and currently based in Rotterdam, trumpeter Peter Somuah a bridge-builder between cultures and continents. “Jazz at its most international”, notes the BBC. For the globetrotting Peter Somuah, musical influences from geographically distant cultures are always just a step away. This is precisely what his new album ‘Walking Distance’ (March 2026), released on ACT is about. Peter Somuah learned to play by listening endlessly to his trumpet heroes Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Roy Hargrove. Somuah stands out with his warm and melancholic sound, as well as the rhythmic prowess reflecting his upbringing surrounded by the music styles native to West Africa. He touches his audiences and makes them groove.

In 2022, Peter Somuah won the prestigious Edison Jazz Award with his first album ‘Outer Space’. Somuah gave us an ambitious biographical mosaic in his memorable ACT debut album ‘Letter to the Universe’ (2023), a cosmopolitan fusion of his many influences, which led the respected German broadsheet the Süddeutsche Zeitung to note that the disc “gave proof of the complexity of jazz as a world language.”

With his follow-up album, “Highlife” (November 2024), Peter Somuah has returned to his origins and to his first musical love. He has been playing ‘highlife’, the iconic music from his homeland – which is strongly rumoured to be joining UNESCO’s worldwide Intangible Cultural Heritage register in 2025 – ever since childhood.