Canadian jazz refers to the jazz and jazz-related music performed by jazz bands and performers in Canada. In Canada, there are hundreds of local and regionally-based Canadian jazz bands and performers. As well, there is a smaller number of bands or performers that have achieved national or international prominence, the most notable being Oscar Peterson.

A small number of Canadian jazz bands and artists have achieved national or international prominence by touring across Canada, the US, or Europe, and releasing recordings that have received critical or audience acclaim in Canada and abroad. These performers include Oscar Peterson, Maynard Ferguson, Lenny Breau, Moe Koffman, Guy Lombardo, Gil Evans, Rob McConnell, Kenny Wheeler all of which are members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, as well as contemporary vocal artists such as Michael Bublé, Diana Krall and Carol Welsman.

Many Canadian cities host one or more jazz festivals. The Montreal International Jazz Festival, for instance, is one of the largest in the world.

Sophie Milman (°1983) is a Russian-born jazz vocalist who lives in Canada. After emigrating from Russia in the early 1990s, Milman, who is Jewish, spent most of her childhood years in Israel where she listened extensively to jazz. Her self-titled debut album was released on October 12, 2004, in Canada via Linus Entertainment and in 2006 in the United States on Koch.

Milman is a student of commerce at the University of Toronto.

She won 2008 Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year for Make Someone Happy.

Her recording of "So Long, You Fool" is used in commercials for Air Wick Winter Collection candles.

Milman is married to lawyer, professor, and musician Casey Chisick, who was also the executive producer on Milman's albums Make Someone Happy (2007) and Take Love Easy (2009), as well as her concert DVD Live in Montreal (2008).

Bill McBirnie (born May 23, 1953) is a jazz and Latin flutist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Bill studied with renowned American flutist, Samuel Baron, Canadian flutist and composer, Robert Aitken, as well as Cuban charanga legend, Richard Egues. McBirnie is known for his excellent technique and he is also recognized as an accomplished improviser, notably in the bebop, swing and Latin idioms as illustrated by his recordings as a sideman with Junior Mance ("Here 'Tis", Sackville Records) Irakere ("Afrocubanismo Live", Bembe Records), Memo Acevedo ("Building Bridges", Jazz Alliance), Emilie-Claire Barlow ("The Very Thought of You", Empress Music) and Cache ("Blended" and "The Toronto Sessions", Indie Pool) . He has performed with many of Toronto's foremost musicians including as a longstanding and charter member of Bernie Senensky's Moe Koffman Tribute Band.

Here are a few illustrative comments regarding Bill’s work:

"Dear Maestro McBirnie, [This] just blew me away. Great, great playing...Innovative... I have never heard anyone play like this...Great technique and music making. The scales are so even it sounds like he wrote the Taffanel scale book...Bill, when you read this, I have to take my hat off to you. This is great playing by any standard." (Sir James Galway, Galway-Flute-Chat, Message #507, Sunday, December 25, 2005)

Edward Isaac "Ed" Bickert, CM (born November 29, 1932) is a Canadian jazz guitarist.

Second youngest of his family, Bickert was born in Hochfeld, Manitoba; his family (parents and 5 children) moved shortly after he was born to Vernon, British Columbia. Although their primary occupation was in farming and orchards, where the children worked as well, his mother was a pianist, and father was a fiddler. Young Ed learned to play basic guitar chords from his sole older brother. On the weekends during the 1940s, he joined in with his parents playing at country dances. After high school, he worked briefly before driving across Canada to Toronto, Ontario with an aspiring writer friend, in 1952. He managed to establish himself in a few years, after a few non-paying jobs, and taking some formal guitar lessons, as guitar player for the leading jazz groups in Toronto.

By the sixties, he was a first-call studio musician.

Notable for his long association with the late Moe Koffman and Phil Nimmons' recordings, Bickert became a charter member of Rob McConnell's Boss Brass. Playing with the rare American musicians who employed Toronto rhythm sections in local gigs, Bickert married, and eschewing the road, stayed at home and raised a family of his own.

Peter Appleyard, OC (born 26 August 1928) is a Canadian jazz vibraphonist, percussionist, and composer of English birth. He has spent most of his life living and performing in the city of Toronto where for many years he was a highly popular performer in the city's nightclubs and hotels. He also played and recorded with many of the city's orchestras and been featured on a number of Canadian television and radio programs. In the early 1970s he drew wide acclaim for his performances with Benny Goodman's jazz sextet with which he toured internationally. In 1992, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of his being an "internationally renowned vibraphonist [who] has represented the Canadian jazz community across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia".

Born in Lincolnshire, Appleyard became apprenticed to a nautical instrument maker after being forced to leave school due to economical reasons related to the Second World War. At that time the popularity of American Big Band music was growing in England, particularly through a major influx in big band recordings from America by jazz legends like Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. These recordings had a strong influence on Appleyard and he decided to pursue a career as a jazz musician. He began his career in the early 1940s playing in the Boys Brigade, a youth organization. He went on to perform as a drummer in several other British dance bands during the 1940s and, while a member of the Royal Air Force during in the mid 1940s, played in RAF bands.