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Steve Berndt
Jazz singer, trombonist, arranger, composer and producer. Amatuer actor.
About Me
Steve Berndt is a versatile jazz musician, vocalist, trombonist, and award winning song writer based in the Ottawa area. Leader of the “jump blues” group The Jivewires, Steve has produced 6 albums of mostly original compositions and seen the band tour in Europe, the United States and throughout Eastern Canada. Joining the 2nd wave ska group Rudeboy in 1997, the band's first recording hit number one on the Canadian college radio circuit and attracted an offer from Gene Simmons of KISS to join his lable. In 2012, after many years of performing a variety of genres, including jazz, big band, swing, jump-jive and ska, Steve produced the first of a two album set of jazz vocal/piano recordings featuring himself on vocals and Steinway Jazz Pianist Brian Browne on piano. Ottawa Citizen jazz critic Peter Hum listed the album, “Déjà Vu”, in his Top Ten best jazz recordings list for 2012, and the title track, a Steve Berndt composition, was included in the Ottawa Jazz Festival 2012 compilation album. In 2014, Steve produced the second album in the set, again writing a song as a title track. “All Over Again” was enthusiastically reviewed by famed jazz critic Scott Yanow, who placed the review in his blog for the Los Angeles Jazz Scene. Both albums were played regularly on rotation on CBC's premier jazz show, “Tonic” hosted by Tim Tamishiro from 2012 until the show's cancellation in 2018. In 2017, Steve appeared in a cameo role and as a fictional member of the Rat Pack in a movie called “Blue Skies On Mars”, a crime drama set in Boston in the ‘70s. Steve wrote a song in the Las Vegas big band style and named the song after the movie. The movie “Blue Skies On Mars” has won several awards and the song “Blue Skies On Mars” won Best Original Song in an Independent Film at the 2018 Independent Film Awards in Los Angeles and was nominated in the same category in the Orinos Film Awards in Italy. Just before the pandemic, Steve recorded “Heart Of Hearts”, a solo jazz album consisting of 8 original songs and 3 covers on which he included many of the best jazz musicians in Ottawa and select talented musicians from Montreal. Wanting to release “Heart Of Hearts” in conjunction with the release of “Blue Skies On Mars” the movie, Steve dropped the album in January 2026.
