Peter-Jan Wagemans’ trajectory sounds like the synopsis of a thrilling novel with bizarre, difficult characters and moving, indeed often sad and trauma-inducing, life experiences. Despite his troubled past, meeting him right away brought out his sense of humour, a certain lightness, the spirit of the jokester, which is also revealed in his facial expressions, his mischievous smile. Also becoming clear almost at once, however, are the depth and intensity comprising his personality, which is reflected in the polyvalent originality of his work. What a rewarding experience it was to embark with him on a musical journey through his life and artistic development.

In the personal version of his biography he wrote: “When I think back to the beginning of my life, I remember chaos. When I was three years old my father died. We, three children and a dysfunctional mother, lived (...) in a small apartment on the sixth floor (...) The sudden death of her husband plunged my mother into a perpetual state of wrath and bitterness (...). After a few years she managed to rent a bigger house and set up a boarding house of sorts for homeless men, because women were untrustworthy, in her view.”

As disturbing as this beginning to a life sounds, it is also eccentric and original. One can already surmise that a child who has survived all this in reasonably healthy state develops an inner strength of a special order. And in the best case, discovers a field in life that can heal, protect and save it. In the case of Peter-Jan Wagemans, that field was music. All forms of artistic expression flow into his works. Theatre, cinema, dance, literature. He takes short but impressive experiences and lets them mature into Gesamtkunstwerke. He works playfully, meticulously, open to the daily experience of the world, to the minor events as well as the major ones, to depths and inanities, everything has its justification, something can emerge from anything. His open view of the world is simultaneously that of a child and a sage. This mixture also accounts for the originality of his work.