1
Where does a miner get the most recent/current block from, to work on confirming new transactions and building the next block?
Obviously it's the 'top' block on the blockchain - where can a new miner 'get' the blockchain from? As I understand it, it's P2P, but how do you connect to those peers in the first place?
2
You've asked two different questions and already answered one of them.
Solo miners get blocks from their peers on the network.
Discovering peers is done by a bootstrapping process. Basically, the software comes with a default list of known nodes, and from these nodes the client learns about other nodes. More details are at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Client_Node_Discovery.
