Pia Beck

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Pia Beck

Pieternella "Pia" Beck (* 18th September 1925 in The Hague ; † 26. November 2009 in Torremolinos , Spain ) was a Dutch jazz - pianist and singer .

Life

Pia Beck played the piano at the age of six. She had her first stage appearance in 1940 in The Hague, as one of the Samoa Girls . In 1945 she was the singer in the swing music playing Miller Sextet by guitarist Ab de Molenaar (1925–1981), with whom she performed in Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). In 1949 she founded her own combo (first with the guitarist Carel de Vogel, the drummer Nico Prins and the bassist Fred Log, from 1953 with the drummer John Engels , among others ), with which she had a hit in the Netherlands in 1950 with her composition Pia's Boogie which has been sold hundreds of thousands and has remained its trademark. In addition to tours in Europe from Spain to Sweden, from 1951 she played regularly in “De Vgende Hollander” in Scheveningen . In 1952 she visited the USA for the first time, where she performed annually until 1964, for example in Birdland and the Down Beat Club, as well as on the radio, and became an honorary citizen of New Orleans and Atlanta . An article in Time Magazine earned her the nickname The Flying Dutchess .

In 1965, she moved to the Costa del Sol with her partner Marga Blanka Samsonowski and their three children , where she first ran a piano bar ( De Holandesa Volante , Die flying Dutchwoman) and then worked as a real estate agent . She also had her own radio program and wrote travel guides for the Dutch. In 1975 she had a comeback with an appearance at the Circustheater in Scheveningen (concert title Beck in the fifties ), a live recording of Pia Beck in Concert was released by Philips. She played on the cruise ship MS Europa and played piano in the restaurant Hof van Holland in Nordwijk. In 1979, Philips released her LPs Beck in Town and Call me Beck , which were followed by further albums each year, in whose titles she played with her name. She also received her first and only gold record during this time , although she sold hundreds of thousands of singles with Pias Boogie in the 1950s. In the 1980s she gave two major concerts a year in Rotterdam and Scheveningen, for example toured with the Dutch Swing College Band and performed at festivals such as the North Sea Jazz Festival . In October 2000 she gave a big anniversary concert on her 75th birthday and her 60th stage anniversary in the Koninglikjke Schouwburg in The Hague. In September 2003 she finally said goodbye to the stage with a performance in the Castellum Novum restaurant in Hilversum .

She last lived with her partner Marga Blanka Samsonowski in Churriana near Torremolinos . She died in June 2009. She was an avowed lesbian at an early age and, for example, took part in the Dutch protest movement in 1977 against Anita Bryant , who was known in the United States as a singer and through orange juice advertising for Florida ( Miami Nightmare concert in October 1977 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam ) who campaigned against homosexual rights in the United States.

Beck wrote two biographies. 1982 De Pia Beck Story and 2000 The Touch of my life (with CD, written with the journalist Henk Krol ), where she describes her time in Spain from 1965 from the perspective of her Grotrian-Steinweg grand piano (which she calls Elise Grotrian ).

Her CD The Touch of My Life was released in 2003 and Pia Beck - 50 Years in 2006 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gouden Plaat , piabeck.com, archived in the webarchive, August 4, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Beck, Pia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beck, Pieternella
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch jazz pianist and singer
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 2009
Place of death Torremolinos , Spain