Pierre Béluse

Pierre Béluse. Percussionist, teacher, b Lachine, near Montreal, 21 Jul 1935. He played 1953-65 in several Montreal nightclubs and studied 1957-9 at the CMM with Saul Goodman and Louis Charbonneau.

Béluse, Pierre

Pierre Béluse. Percussionist, teacher, b Lachine, near Montreal, 21 Jul 1935. He played 1953-65 in several Montreal nightclubs and studied 1957-9 at the CMM with Saul Goodman and Louis Charbonneau. Béluse was one of the leading jazz drummers in Montreal in the early 1960s and worked with Paul Bley, Pierre Leduc, Galt MacDermot, and René Thomas, among others, and with such distinguished US musicians as Jimmy Heath. In 1961 he toured in Quebec with the Double-Six vocal ensemble from Paris. He made LPs with MacDermot and Armas Maiste.

A member of the MSO (1959-80), and of the SMCQ Ensemble (1967- ), he participated with the latter in the ninth Festival d'art contemporain (1972) in Royan, France. He also has played in CBC orchestras and, with percussionists Guy Lachapelle and Robert Leroux, was a member of the Ensemble Polycousmie founded by Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux in 1972. Béluse joined the NACO in 1982. He gave courses at the St-Laurent Cegep (1975-8) and began teaching at McGill University in 1967. He is a founder-member and the director of the McGill Percussion Ensemble, established in 1969, and he toured Quebec with the ensemble for JMC in 1978. He also founded the ensemble Concept Neuf (1978-81), which specialized in popular music written or arranged for percussion. He became president of the Quebec chapter of the Percussive Arts Society in 1979. Béluse also has composed some works, notably for percussion.