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Grolloo remembers Harry Muskee with a concert and portraits in the church

Grolloo remembered blues singer Harry Muskee on Friday 25 September with a concert in the church, which had sold out long in advance. On Saturday and Sunday, an exhibition of seventeen works of art about him was on show there.

Muskee, the singer of Cuby & The Blizzards, died on 26 September 2011 in Rolde, where he lived, exactly fifteen years before the Saturday of the commemorative weekend. The Stichting Kerk19 Grolloo organised the weekend together with the C+B Museum and café Hofsteenge.

On Friday evening, Egbert Meijers opened the exhibition and spoke about the Grolloo of the 1960s, when Muskee came to live close to his parents' house, and about his last conversation with the singer, shortly before his death.

Then Robbert Fossen and, after the interval, the Cat Fever Band played an acoustic blues concert with songs by Cuby & The Blizzards and by musicians who inspired Muskee. When they played together at the end, the whole audience was dancing and clapping along between the pews.

The C+B Museum lent the seventeen works of art, mostly paintings, to the foundation; according to the organisers, some of them had never been shown in public before. One of the portraits was made by a fan from Giessenburg, who had lent it to the museum; after his death in 2025, his wife donated the portrait to the museum. She was at the concert on Friday and, like other concertgoers, came back at the weekend for the exhibition.

The church in Grolloo was built in 1853 with money raised by the people of the village. A service is still held there once a month, and Kerk19 also wants to use the building more often for exhibitions, concerts and talks.

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