Sinatra by Douglas & Bosco

Fashion, then a television contest

Peter Douglas was born Jean-Pierre and worked in the fashion trade before singing paid the bills. The change came through television. In 1987 he won the Soundmixshow, the Dutch impersonation contest fronted by Henny Huisman, with a Frank Sinatra turn; the jury chairman Jacques d'Ancona called the performance astounding and picked out the strength of the young-Sinatra portrayal in particular. The win is still the hinge of the biography, and the act has been built on the same premise ever since: not a costume piece, but a voice that happens to sit in the same place as the original.

That has kept him working for close to four decades. His own material runs to two Sinatra-centred records, "Stars On Frankie" and "Thank You Frank", and the touring has gone well beyond the Netherlands — Belgium, Germany, Japan and the United States. German television gave him a second career of sorts, with appearances on programmes hosted by Rudi Carrell, Harald Juhnke and Karl Dall, and engagements singing with the orchestras of Hugo Strasser and Klaus Hallen. Between the theatre work there were commercials for Heineken and Lotto.

New York, 1996

The episode Douglas returns to most often happened in 1996, when he sang at the New York Marathon. The performance led to an invitation to sing "Thank You Frank" at the celebration of Sinatra's 81st birthday — Sinatra died less than two years later, in May 1998. For a tribute performer, an endorsement from that direction is the closest thing to a credential, and it is the line that has followed him through every promoter's copy since.

Closer to home, the recognition has come from the specialists. Jan van den Berg, the former chairman of the International Sinatra Society Holland, is among those quoted on Douglas's own site describing him as the leading Sinatra interpreter working in the Netherlands.

The band that changed the scale of it

The other half of the billing is BOSCO, a ten-piece jazz and pop orchestra founded in 2003 by the trumpeter, arranger and producer Daan Bogers. Six of the ten are brass, which is what gives the group its weight and is also why it can take on the Nelson Riddle and Billy May charts that a small backing combo cannot.

BOSCO is not a Sinatra band by trade. It has worked with Denise Jannah, Joke Bruijs, Antje Monteiro and Tim Akkerman, and its collaboration with the Voice winner Dennis van Aarssen produced a record that took an Edison and went gold; a 2020 project won an Edison Jazzism award. The band has also played with the psychobilly group Batmobile, and its festival diary covers Paaspop and Concert at Sea alongside the jazz circuit — Breda Jazz Festival on 16 May 2026 and Jazz In Duketown in Den Bosch on 22 May 2026 are both in the book. Since 2024 its own theatre production has run with the singer Johnny Rosenberg, which is the version of BOSCO most Dutch audiences will see in 2026.

That matters for anyone buying a ticket to the Douglas show: the orchestra has a parallel life, and the nights the two acts combine are a minority of either diary.

2024: primetime, the Ziggo Dome and a full Concertgebouw

The pairing broke through in 2024 on SBS6's "The Tribute – Battle Of The Bands", where Douglas and BOSCO appeared weekly for seven weeks and finished fourth in the final. The series spun off into sold-out Ziggo Dome concerts under the banner "The Tribute live in concert", and Douglas and the band were on those bills.

The payoff came on 14 August 2024, when the act played the Main Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam under its own name. That show ran from 20:00 to 21:45 with no interval, with tickets at €25, €35 and €45 across three categories, and it sold out. A big-band tribute filling the Concertgebouw's main room on its own steam is a different order of business from the function-room circuit, and it set up everything that followed.

Sinatra The Story, and a 40-year jubilee

For the 2025/26 season Douglas and BOSCO built a new theatre show rather than recycling the concert. "Sinatra The Story" threads the songs through a biography, mixing the standards with less-played catalogue material and Douglas's own narration between numbers. It opened on the regional circuit — Muziekgebouw Eindhoven's Hertog Jan Zaal on 11 September 2025, doors at 19:15 for a 20:15 start, at €35 including the interval drink — and went on through houses including Theater de Oranjerie in Roermond, the Kennemer Theater, PHIL Haarlem and Chassé in Breda, mostly in the low-to-mid thirties for a ticket.

The 2026/27 diary is a separate project. Douglas marks 40 years in the business with a jubilee tour called MY WAY, and most of those nights are with the Peter Douglas Quartet rather than the full orchestra: the première at the Vioolkist in Hilversum on 10 October 2026 has already sold out, with a matinee added on 11 October. The run takes in the Celebration Jazz Festival at Theater Orpheus on 12 September 2026 and Theater Kielzog in Hoogezand on 24 October 2026, then a string of December church concerts — Boxmeer on 18 December, Veghel on 19 December, Bergen op Zoom on 20 December — before continuing through 2027 to the Haven theater in IJmuiden on 9 May.

Within all of that, exactly one date carries the full big band. On Friday 16 October 2026 Douglas takes BOSCO to the Stadsschouwburg in Antwerp, and both the singer's schedule and the orchestra's list it as the same night.

Where it stands

The act's position at the end of September 2026 is straightforward: a performer four decades into the job, a band with its own award record and its own separate tour, a television year that took them to an arena, and a theatre show that has done a full season of regional houses. Published press criticism is thin — this is a circuit that gets listings rather than broadsheet reviews — so the honest evidence of how it is going is commercial: the Concertgebouw sold out in August 2024, and the Hilversum première of the jubilee tour sold out well ahead of October 2026.

What is not in dispute is the sound. A six-brass front line playing the original arrangements, with a singer who has spent 40 years inside the same phrasing, is a specific and expensive thing to put on stage, and the Antwerp date is the one night in the current diary where all of it is in the room at once.