Peter Somuah

Hailing from Ghana, Peter Somuah works as a composer, trumpeter, and vocalist while based in the Netherlands. His trumpet work demonstrates a firm grasp of jazz language, delivered through a warm bell-like timbre shaped chiefly by the robust intensity of second quintet Miles Davis and the technical precision of Roy Hargrove, while his melodic phrasing also recalls the approach of Barbados-born British trumpeter Harry Beckett. As a keen improviser, Somuah fuses modern jazz, funk, and Ghanaian polyrhythms, occasionally enhanced by electronics.

His debut album, Outer Space, arrived in 2022 on the Sony-distributed Dox Records label and featured a septet plus four alternating singers. Strong international critical response earned him a showcase at the North Sea Jazz Festival and led to a signing with Germany’s ACT Music, which released the widely acclaimed Letter to the Universe in 2023. That project, performed by an expanded ensemble again including vocalists, reached charts in several African and Western European countries. Somuah promoted it with tours spanning Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. He continued with Highlife in November 2024, drawing on the original Ghanaian genre to frame collective interplay and improvisation, and welcomed countryman Pat Thomas, the “golden voice of Africa,” among his guests.