Citadelic festival 2026 

May 27 - 19H30

artist in residence
    day 1:  Pieter-Jan De Smet : Karaoke Winterreise (BE)
           Schubert the PJDS way

Pieter-Jan De Smet started his first band at the age of 12: Route 66. The band was named after the very first song he learned to play on his father’s guitar.

At 17, he began writing his own songs, studied acting at Studio Herman Teirlinck, and followed his musical passion in the band The Lionhearts. Not long after, however, he left the band after meeting guitarist Geoffrey Burton, and together they started a group under his own name, which would later become PJDS.

For Pieter-Jan, it’s all part of the same creative journey: composing for Theater Zuidpool, translating films, appearing in De Kotmadam, working on projects at Kopergieterij in Ghent, or portraying Hoge Hoogte Piet.

A few years ago, De Smet gave an unforgettable performance of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise at Citadelic, accompanied by Ad Cominotto on accordion. At the time, this was an attempt to remove the masterpiece from the somewhat sclerotic environment in which it is usually performed. Schubert in a café!

Over the past winter, PJ has been working on an electronic arrangement of Winterreise. Apart from a few percussive additions, Schubert’s original piano score was followed strictly. The assignment of sounds to the fingering was done in an almost graphic manner — all the top notes assigned to one sound, and so on.

The idea is to see how an early nineteenth-century song cycle holds up when combined with software and an untrained singer.

Tonight, for the very first time, PJ will perform 19 of the original 24 songs live, accompanied by a backing track playing from his laptop.

Karaoke Winterreise, then.

OTHER CONCERTS MAY 27

with the marvelous support of De Vlaamse Gemeenschap and de Stad Gent