How filmmaker Freek Lagerweij, while singing, makes a dream come true that has been slumbering in him for 40 years

He sang self-written songs from his first album there and finally really stepped in the footsteps of his father and mother. ,,I am 58 years old, it took a long time, but now the time has come, the dream has become reality”, he said.

White farmhouse

The foundation for that dream was laid in a small white farmhouse in the hamlet of Roelage, south of Ter Apel, not far from the border with Germany. He grew up there, the son of Henk and Zwanet Lagerweij.

Both taught Dutch at the Regional School Community in Ter Apel. But both also wrote songs. ,,My father sang it during performances in the Hotel Boschhuis in Ter Apel and in other places in the North”, says son Freek. ,,He was an inspired small artist who gained fame in that capacity. Between the songs he made the audience laugh with his cabaret lyrics. My mother was present at the performances, as a teenager I regularly accompanied him on the piano. Those were wonderful evenings.”

Adele Bloemendaal

He already fell in love with the piano as a toddler. ,,I was about 4 years old when Martin van Dijk came to live with us, in our little white farmhouse. He was a pianist and later became the accompanist of Adèle Bloemendaal, among others. But then he was a student of the RSG. He lived at the boarding school in Ter Apel but hated it and came to live with my parents. He played a lot of piano at our house, I listened and was inspired.”

With so much music around him, it was inevitable that he would start writing songs himself. “I did that as a teenager. I even had my own band at the RSG. But at a certain point I stopped writing. I did become a member of a Top 40 orchestra that also included the Ter Apeler singer Alex Vissering. We performed a lot in discotheques.”

Hard blow to the family

During that period, in 1987 to be precise, his mother passed away. That blow hit the family very hard, father Henk stopped touring, the sentence was gone.

Freek continued to perform in discotheques for several years, but eventually started ‘real’ life. He went to work, served various employers, settled with his family in Paterswolde, where he still lives, and eventually set up his own company. “A company that makes films, for example for municipalities and other organisations. A few years ago we also made a film for the Museum Klooster in Ter Apel. That was like a home game, I was in the country of my youth.”

In all those activities, in all those years, that wish was always hidden in him. The desire to write his own songs, put them on an album and perform them for an audience, as his parents often did.

Wonderful performance

In 2017, when father Henk passed away, that wish knocked violently ‘at the door’ again. ,,He did the same when I was asked by Sociëteit De Harmonie in Groningen to come and sing my parents’ songs. They also performed there regularly. I said yes and it was a wonderful performance, there were mainly people my parents age in the room. Then I gave the same performance in Het Boschhuis in Ter Apel, in other words on the ‘primal place’. I realized how beautiful writing songs is, how much I wanted to do that. And then I decided it was time to make my dream come true.”

He started writing, called in other musicians and that’s how it came about Dear Peace. His so fervently desired album that can be found on Spotify but of which he would also love to make a vinyl version, an old-fashioned long-playing record.

Two numbers from parents

On Sunday he sang his album songs for the first time in front of an audience, in De Harmonie. Dutch songs that are about life and that are almost all his. ,,Yes almost. Because two songs on my album are from my parents. One from my father, one from my mother. In the end it started with them, in the white farmhouse and on all those evenings on stage, in front of an audience.”