The musical life of Peter

1956 – 1961:
In this following story I will tell you about my life with music and how I became a Inhabitant of Sweden. All started of course at my birth. I was born on April the fourth 1956 in the city hospital of Hoorn in the Netherlands. I was an only child and was raised on the “Venenlaan” (Boggy Lane) in Hoorn. My parents had a little shoe store and my father was a shoemaker. I remembered my mother told me I was kind of “conducting” the music of the street bands when they passed our house when I was in the pram. I think that was my first musical contribution to this world.

When I could walk my father made me a tin drum with a rubber skin.
That was my first drum! I played a lot alone or with some other children in the neighborhood en my parents were really supporting my efforts to play on the drum.
I had a good childhood with loving parents and was very happy.

1961 - 1966
When  I was about five  years of age they bought me a real drum!
That was great. So I practiced and practiced. I think my parents thought I had some talent because the let me join the drum band of Hoorn when I was about six or seven. After a few month I was allowed to play on public.


There were two separate bands, one was called JongHoorn (means Young Hoorn) and the other was called Boertjes ( means Little Farmers). I got set of clothes for them and a new snare drum!

It was a lot of fun playing and marching on events in the city. To help me with learning more of music I got music lessons too at a local music school. It was on the second floor of Wassenaars music store. I got my first lessons from Roelof Wassenaar who was the owner and also conductor of several  local orchestras. He learned me to read music and after only half a year he asked me to play in one of his orchestras, the accordion orchestra EHAV. I was only eight was I gave my first concert in the theater of Hoorn. The newspaper pick up my performance and wrote about it. There was also a big picture in the newspaper.

The concert was together with a German orchestra and one of the members of that stayed at our place. It was my first international experience.

In the years that followed I played a lot with all the bands and orchestras in Hoorn and outside. It was then I already decided I wanted to be professional percussionist.

When I was ten years old  a famous English band, The Brigghouse Ambulance Brigade, came to Hoorn and played there together with us. I learned some nice new snare drum techniques from them.

1967 - 1972
I became interested in playing a drum set and begged my parents for one. After a few month I got a simple set and I got some lessons from a well know drummer in Hoorn, Jan Bloem, who played with a popular band, named Vico Pescatore.
I could also use it with the orchestras and had some performances with Henk ten Boekel on accordion.


When I was twelve I played in my first Band. It was the band of the Catholic church in Hoorn. There I met  Wim Schuts who became a very good friend.  He had another band that needed a drummer. I was a bit young but still he asked me (and my parents) if I would like to play with them. That was a cover band named Nomen Nescio.

I don’t really remember how long we played together but it must have been at least five years or longer. In the mean time I went to the first class of the Werenfridus College and tried to study together with playing music. That was not easy. My study results were not so good so I had to go to a different school the next year, the Alloysius Mavo.

1972 - 1978

In the seventies Win Schuts and I started a new band, because Nomen Nescio stopped. We looked for a name and came up  with Boggy Lane, the street where I grew up and still lived at that time. We found some musical friends and started playing covers. The singer of the band, Piet Louter, also wrote his own songs and we recorded some at home. We did a few talent shows trying to get famous but that didn’t work ;-)
 The band played around quite often and stayed together for a few years. Then Piet left the band and also the bass player so we had to find replacement. Now we found a few new members and a femail singer, named Carolien and changed the name to “Fantasy”.

At about that same time I also began studying percussion at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam. Every day I traveled to Amsterdam to learn snare drum, timpani, marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, drums and more from well-known teachers. I had lessons from Jan Pustjens, Jan Labordus and Werner Otten for classical instruments. They were playing at the time for the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra and the Amsterdams philharmonic. My drum lessons I got from Ton Rooijers. Additional lessons on percussion were given by several guest teachers from around the world. I remember a few of my fellow students: Nick Woud, Peter Elbertse, Peter Prommel, Gerhard Jeltes, Herman Rieken, Peter Berk and Chiel  Meijering.

After a few years I began teaching on several music schools as a substitute and playing also from time to time as an extra player in the Amsterdam Philharmonic. The orchestra was also accompanying several operas all around the Netherlands. Sometimes I played in the orchestra and sometimes on stage as part of the opera.

In 1976 I also was asked to teach at the music school in my home town Hoorn. That was the start of a longtime job. I stayed at this school until I retired at my 60th in 2016. There I had many students and some great times with them and my colleagues.

In years 1977 and 1978 I got great lessons on marimba by Micheal Rosen from the USA. He was very good in making me love the marimba and developing my skills on the instrument. With the ensemble of the conservatory  we gave several nice concerts in Amsterdam.
In 1979 I finished my study at the conservatory and got my degree in teaching and playing percussion. I also got an extra job at the music school of Den Helder around that time.

1979 - 1984
The popular music was still going strong too with my band. The line up changed a few times and the
name was changed back to Boggy Lane but the music stayed about the same. Still covering the popular music of that time. I also played with some other bands like the Benelux Quintet.
I think that around 1985 I stopped with the cover bands and focused mainly on teaching. I only played occasionally as free-lance drummer or percussionist.




1984 - 1988
Slagwerkgroup “Horen”
Half way the eighties there were some drummers in Hoorn that wanted to play together with percussion. So we formed a percussion group called it “Horen” and started improvising. We played on festivals and schools and although we came all from different styles of music we had a lot of fun during some four years. The fellow percussionist were George Alma (Dixieland), George van Heeteringen (jazz), Hans Gillissen (pop)and Joop Aalpol (harmonie).

1996 - 2004
Xpose
After several years I wanted to play again but more with little Latin and African percussion. In 1996 I found a few guys that were also interested and started making our own improvised music with guitar and percussion. We made a few recordings that were out on cassette and later CD. The guitars were electric so I had to make my percussion amplified. I didn’t like that very much mostly so I wanted to look for a more acoustic approach. One of the guitarist left the group and we found someone else. He played acoustic guitar and now we changed the style of music. The name was also changed and became:

2004 - 2014
Dwaalspoor

All music was now played acoustically. The band was later expanded with a violin, played by a colleague, Ankie Teunisse, from the music school. So the band was formed by Schelte Eppinga , guitar, Wieger Janse, guitar, Peter Boer , bass, Ankie Teunissen, violin and me on percussion. We made music, recorded and performed until 2014. After ten years we lost inspiration and went our separate ways.






2003 -2014

Womans Best and meeting Feico de Leeuw
About 2003 a colleague of mine at the music school Maaike Breijman, asked if wanted to play with her in a close harmony group with three other girls and a pianist by the name of Feico de Leeuw. I knew Feico by name and but never played with him. I was curious and said I would like to try.
That was the beginning of a great time and friendship with one of the greatest musicians I ever met. We had some wonderful performances until 2005. The real success was not coming and the group broke up. Pity but the cooperation with Feico did not stop.

Feico
Feico was a man with thousand ideas and was a what you might call a workaholic. I played with him in his studio and on several projects. Some of them I will describe here shortly.

Superkanja:

One of his ideas was forming a band, playing only self made songs in a bit African/South American style. He called the band Superkanja after the national soup of Gambia. He found a pair of great musicians and singers. We rehearsed a few times and began looking for gigs. Everywhere we played it was a great party. The music was so lively that nobody could stand still and the songs were also very funny. Unfortunately the band was a bit loose and it was very hard to get them together often enough to make it a success. But all the members stayed together in other musical projects of Feico, so the band actually never “died”.

Spot On:

One of his other initiatives was creating a stage for new singers to perform with a professional band in Hoorn. The idea was to organize a special concert with a theme and “amateur“ singers could subscribe to be part of the show and choose a number they wanted to perform. It was a great idea but a lot of work for him and also for the band. Sometimes we had to rehearse on one day about 30 songs! The Spot On project was a super success! I think he really succeeded in his effort to create a new platform for beginning singers in Hoorn.

Café Chantant:
One of the last projects I was involved in with Feico was “Café Chantant”. The project was about making a kind of café were singers performed cabaret songs in Dutch with a little wink. Every first Sunday of the month the team performed on a cafe stage in Hoorn before a increasing audience. It became a very popular event.

Besides a great friend on stage Feico became also a very close friend privately. He often came to our holiday house in Sweden during the summer and we had a lot of fun together. Unfortunately he died very suddenly on the 28th of September 2014 at a age of 58. I will miss him forever!

In 2015 the Spot On and Superkanja band came together for the last time to make a tribute to Feico. We played on the outdoor festival in Hoorn were we also played with Feico previous years and gave a super concert with a lot of his music friends

2016
So now I reached 60 years and I wanted to get a new challenge. I could get an early retirement with my music school and my partner and I decided to start a new life in Sweden. We already had the house so we sold our house in Holland and emigrated to our new homeland. It was hard to say goodbye to all my music friends but I am sure we will stay in touch. Here in Sweden I can find the rest I wanted and do only the things I want. No stress, and a beautiful nature around us. Sure I will keep on playing music!

2019
This year was filled with music. I have been playing  nice Swedish dances with Ytje Kalfsbeek on cello and Gunnar Heden on violin. I was not playing percussion but piano. Nice for a change!

There were also other musical meetings and therefore I can say it is a good music year!