Remembering Peter Leitch
August 19, 1944 – December 30, 2024
A tribute to the jazz guitarist
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Guitarist Peter Leitch passed away on Dec. 30, 2024 at the age of 80.
He was born on Aug. 19, 1944 in Montreal, Canada and took up the guitar as a teenager.
Always attracted to straight ahead jazz, Leitch worked in the 1970s mostly in Canada including with Sadik Hakim, Milt Jackson, Red Norvo, and Kenny Wheeler, touring the Soviet Union with Fraser MacPherson.
Always in great demand, he later worked in the United States with such notables as the Al Grey-Jimmy Forrest Quintet, Gary Bartz, Jaki Byard, John Hicks, Kirk Lightsey, Bobby Watson, Pepper Adams, Jeri Brown, Oscar Peterson, and Woody Shaw.
Leitch, who led his first of at least 20 albums in 1981, was also a journalist, photographer and educator, publishing his autobiography Off The Books: A Jazz Life in 2013.
Declining health resulted in him retiring from playing in mid-2015 although he continued arranging and composing for the Peter Leitch New Life Orchestra for a few years.
Peter Leitch duets with bassist Dwayne Burno in 2013 for a version of “I Could Write A Book.”
-Scott Yanow
