Birth name Pieter Perquin Years active 1996–present Name Pieter Perquin | Role Musician | |
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Occupation(s) Musician, composer, producer Music group Pete Philly and Perquisite (2003 – 2009) Awards Golden Calf for Best Music Similar People Pieter Monzon, Kris Berry, Benjamin Herman, Renske Taminiau, Sanne Vogel Profiles | ||
Pieter Perquin (born 30 April 1982, Amsterdam, Netherlands), better known under the pseudonym Perquisite, is a Dutch musician, music producer and composer.
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Biography
In 1996, at the age of 14, Perquisite started making hiphopbeats. Due to his classical musical background he often incorporated classical and jazzy elements into his creations. In 2001 he started his own record label Unexpected Records and made his debut with The Outta Nowhere EP, in collaboration with Dutch jazz musician Benjamin Herman. After this he composed and produced another solo EP Double Vision, which was released in 2002.
In 2003 Perquisite started collaborating with Dutch rapper/MC Pete Philly, and together they had their break through as the hiphop duo Pete Philly & Perquisite. They released two albums, and toured around the world for five years. They played multiple festivals, including Lowlands, North Sea Jazz and Sziget. Their studio album 'Mindstate' (2005) received a lot of critical acclaim, Talib Kweli stating; 'Musically, these guys are light years ahead of the game.'. Studio album 'Mystery Repeats' (2007) came in second position in the Dutch charts and stayed in the charts for 25 weeks. Together Pete & Perq won multiple prizes, including the Dutch 'Silver Harp', and the 'Amsterdam Prize for the Arts'. After more than 300 performances in and outside of the Netherlands, including providing the warm up act for James Brown and Kanye West, the duo ended their collaboration in the autumn of 2009 with a last 'Final Celebration Tour'.
In 2009 Perquisite won a Golden Calf (Dutch: Gouden Kalf), (which is the award for the Netherlands Film Festival) for composing the music for the film 'Carmen van het Noorden'. Around the same time, Perquisite was also working on his solo album 'Across', that saw its release in October 2010. On 'Across' Perquisite collaborated with twelve different Dutch vocalists.
From 2009 onwards, Perquisite started focussing mainly on composing music for films, documentaries, plays and commercials.
In 2012 he met singer Kris Berry at a weekly jam session in Amsterdam. They started writing tracks together and decided to release an album together. The joint album 'Lovestruck Puzzles' was released in September 2013 via Unexpected Records.
Late 2015 Perquisite was invited to function as a judge for performances by students at the Conservatory in Enschede. There he first met Jeangu Macrooy, with whom a collaboration kicked off. Jeangu was signed to Unexpected Records and his debut EP, produced by Perquisite, was released in April 2016.
Besides his career as an artist/producer, Perquisite has been running his own record label Unexpected Records since 2001. He has also been responsible for the management of Pete Philly & Perquisite and is a member of the board of Dutch copyright organisation BUMA/STEMRA. In 2015 Perquisite and a number of other musicians (including Tjeerd Bomhof, Torre Florim and Arriën Molema) established BAM! (Dutch Songwriting Society), for which Perquisite became the chairman.