Whenever Edmonton’s top tier music producers need a hired gun, one of the first names that pops up is Peter Belec.
In the decade since he graduated from the Grant MacEwan College guitar program, Belec has worked as a studio musician on more than 15 albums.
And now the big wait is over. The St. Albert resident and jazz musician is officially releasing his first instrumental album titled Melodic Miner at the Yardbird Suite on Saturday. Accompanying him is the cream of the jazz scene — Bob Tildesley (trumpet), Jerrold Dubyk (saxophone), Dan Churchill (bass), Louis Tovar (percussion), Jamie Cooper (drums) and Doug Organ (piano/keys).
Recorded by Organ, the eight-track CD features solid original music written over a four-year period where Belec had the opportunity to flex his versatile musical chops in various genres. They are true-colour snapshots, moments in a career where he experiments between balancing written passages with improvised spaces.
After graduating from MacEwan in 2001, Belec played gigs every weekend with ska band King Muskafa and Roger, an all-original rock band. Roger even won a songwriting contest on Rock 100.3 FM The Bear before the band broke up in 2005.
Today he’s still part of the super-funk sounds of Superband, the horn-heavy vibe of Retrofitz and the folk/rock sounds of Colleen Brown. And in St. Albert, he’s a Thursday night regular playing jazz at Ric’s Grill.
“To me that’s what being a professional musician means — step into any situation and play a variety of music. I never wanted to be pinned down to one style artistically. It’s too boring,” says Belec.
Melodic Miner flies all over the map with tunes in the reggae, Latin, funk and modern jazz spectrum. “I’ve tried to make it diverse so I can satisfy different sides of me.”
In addition to versatility, Melodic Miner reflects Belec’s offbeat humour. For instance the reggae influenced tune Guit and Shiggles is a word inversion for “shits and giggles.” And Mrs. Roper, a Latin number inspired by two trips to Cuba, is named for the sultry muumuu-wearing wife of the landlord in the television series Three’s Company.
Much of the album is straight-ahead improvisation. “For me that’s the soul, the life, the spontaneity. The interaction is a beautiful thing. I might play a motif or respond to another one. To throw it back or take it and develop it takes a skilled player.”
