Adrian Cho

About Adrian Cho

A Little About Me

I was born and raised in Australia. In 2000 I moved to Ottawa, Canada with my two dogs Kira and Chief. My wife Deborah Taylor is the pastor at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in the east end of Ottawa. She was born and grew up in the U.S.A. and moved to Ottawa in 2002. Together we live with our very large family of dogs and cats on a large acreage in the rural area west of the city. We love the country life even if it does take us about 45 minutes to drive downtown (in good weather). I work as both a professional musician and a business and technology manager.

Official Bio

Conductor and bassist Adrian Cho has been described by Doug Fischer of the Ottawa Citizen as “a musical missionary” and by Melanie Scott of WHERE Ottawa as “one of our city's most adventurous musical renaissance men.” Born in Sydney, Australia, he studied piano at the Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne. He has worked in symphonic, jazz, wind band and chamber music ensembles as an arranger, bandleader, conductor and performer on piano, trumpet and double bass. Since moving to Ottawa in 2000, he has established himself as one of the city's in-demand freelance bassists and a producer, bandleader and educator of note. As the Artistic Director of the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra, he brings his vision, leadership, and diverse musical background to IJO programming and performances. Musicians and audiences have come to trust and enjoy his programming and artistic leadership. As an educator, his highly informative and personable style of presentation has been warmly received and highly praised. Alex Hutchinson of the Ottawa Citizen dubbed him “a cool guide to hot jazz” and wrote “you couldn't have asked for a better guide to the music” while John Kelman of All About Jazz wrote that “Cho’s intentions were clearly to educate as much as entertain, and he succeeded on both fronts.”

Adrian has appeared at the Ottawa International Jazz Festival, leading IJO ensembles in the prestigious Connoisseur Series at the National Library in 2005, the Studio Series at the National Arts Center Studio in 2006, and in the Great Canadian Jazz Series on the Main Stage in Confederation Park in 2008.

In addition to a successful artistic career, Adrian has maintained a parallel career in the technology industry. He has worked in the computer software industry for over twenty years in positions of leadership and management in consulting, engineering and business. While based in Australia, he consulted to a wide range of organisations including retail and commercial banks, and research and development labs at Fujitsu and IBM. For the past fifteen years he has helped to produce multiple class-leading and award-winning software engineering and team collaboration tools. These products have enabled software engineering individuals and teams to work more effectively and productively. Adrian is currently working with the IBM team that is developing the Jazz team collaboration platform. Over the past seven years Adrian has developed considerable expertise in the field of managing software intellectual property. He manages the intellectual property efforts for IBM's worldwide Eclipse and Jazz initiatives and chairs the IP Advisory Committee of the Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors. IBM's marketing team recently asked Adrian to assist with their Jazz marketing efforts. In response he is helping them to grow an ecosystem of business partners around the Jazz technology through their Ensemble initiative.

Adrian has enjoyed success and developed a reputation in multiple fields as someone who can execute, innovate and lead. He combines his artistic and business experience as a public speaker using the medium of jazz performance and history to deliver his messages about leadership, teamwork and innovation.