Toronto’s Peter Katz hasn’t even turned 30 yet, but the Ryerson grad has already received the CBC Galaxie Rising Star award, won the Grand Prize at Toronto’s IndieWeek and has been nominated for the COCA Emerging Artist of the Year Award and the Emerging Artist of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

“The amount of energy and effort people give to come to my performance and listen to my music makes me want to play and do the best performance that I can - that’s what I’m in it for,” says Katz, 29.

His passion is obvious on his latest album, the CD/DVD release Peter Katz and Friends LIVE at the Music Gallery.

Now on his eighth tour, Katz has played countless shows (about 150 a year), yet the artist is both grateful and humble.

“I make sure I don’t forget how lucky I am to do this,” he says. “It doesn’t take much to remind me. Being on sftage is never difficult, it’s a joy having people come to listen to me. That’s what it’s all about. Even though I play hundreds of shows every year it never gets old.”

His mix of acoustic and folk music blends well on his new live album. As a performer he offers the audience a feel for who he is.

“The stories, the talking, it’s more of a holistic sense of who I am and what I am about,” says Katz. “It’s a deeper way of getting to know the music and what my shows are like.”

His music is quite moving, giving a sense of the world as being both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

There is always a constant struggle, and in that struggle he sings about growth, life, rebirth and death.

First of the Last to Know talks about self-realization, while The Fence is a heart-wrenching song about what the last thoughts of Matthew Sheppard, the young victim of a hate crime in 1998, may have been.

“I tend to write about whatever hits me as I am walking through the world,” he says.

It is this passion for humanity, the creative process and moving the listener to honest emotion that allows Katz to create a magical connection with the audience.

“There is no greater feeling in the world because you made something out of nothing and something exists now and you can hold it in your hand and you feel like, ‘Oh wow, this is a song I made and it will last for all time, whether people listen to it or not.’ It’s a magical feeling ... and people connect with it really intensely. It’s worth going through that process.”

Published in Volume 66, Number 11 of The Uniter (November 9, 2011)