The Pink Floyd Project

Friesland, 2006, and a decision not to be a covers band

Pink Floyd Project have been playing Pink Floyd's repertoire since 2006, working out of Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands. The founding idea separates them from most tribute acts: the band describes what it makes as a theatrical total experience rather than a concert of other people's songs, built around live musicians, surround sound, projection and effects. In practice that has meant working with a director, Aike Dirkzwager, and with the music journalist and Pink Floyd biographer Wouter Bessels, who shapes the historical framing of each production.

The repertoire they claim is unusually wide for a tribute. Rather than settling on the three or four albums that sell tickets, they cover the catalogue from the psychedelic Syd Barrett period through to David Gilmour's later work, and they build individual shows around specific eras, albums or even specific historical concerts. One production, Pink Floyd in De Kuip 1994, is built around a single night Pink Floyd played in Rotterdam.

The core is a six-piece: Chris Mustamu on lead vocals, André Becker and Henk Bennen on guitars, Willem Friso Wielenga on keyboards, Romke de Jong on bass and Wilco Zethof on drums, with Sanne and Femke Hoeksma and Petra Creutzberg on backing vocals. For the larger theatrical productions the line-up expands considerably — the Prague billing of The Wall 45 Years listed thirteen people on stage, with Wim Holsappel as a second lead vocalist, Ruben Mulder as an additional keyboard player, three backing singers, two actors and a third actor appearing on screen.

The work is the productions

A tribute band's body of work is not a discography, and Pink Floyd Project's can be read off the shows they have mounted and retired. Acoustic Echoes, in December 2017, stripped the material back to an unplugged theatre concert. The same month they played the other extreme: Pink Floyd Project XXL at the Zuiderstrandtheater in The Hague on 12 December 2017, with thirteen musicians, quadraphonic sound, lasers, a large circular projection screen, the inflatable pig, the former Vandenberg and Kayak singer Bert Heerink on vocals and Durga McBroom — who sang on Pink Floyd's last tours — as a guest.

The Wall followed in February 2020, including a performance at De Tamboer in Hoogeveen on 13 February with the Kidsright children's choir and projection-led staging. Return to The Dark Side of the Moon toured the theatres from 2023, playing De Tamboer on 11 March that year as a full-album performance padded out with less obvious selections.

The current theatre show, Wish You Were Here, is the most historically literal of them. It reconstructs the set Pink Floyd were playing in 1975: Wish You Were Here in full before the interval, The Dark Side of the Moon in full after it. It has been on the road since 2024 — De Tamboer took it on 29 November that year — and remains in the schedule through to early 2027.

Then there is the anniversary strand. P·U·L·S·E 30 Years, marking three decades since the 1995 live album, played the RTM Stage at Rotterdam Ahoy on 5 September 2025, pairing a complete Dark Side of the Moon with the original 1994–95 P·U·L·S·E running order.

The Wall, built twice

The production that has travelled furthest is The Wall 45 Years, which the band regards as its most successful and which has played Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic as well as the Dutch theatre circuit. Its most unusual booking took it out of the rock circuit entirely: the State Opera in Prague, on 17 November 2025, promoted under Metronome's Moon Series. The date was chosen deliberately — 17 November is the Czech holiday marking the Velvet Revolution — and the National Theatre listed the show at roughly two hours plus a twenty-minute interval, performed in English with Czech and English surtitles, under the themes of isolation, social pressure and the abuse of power.

Rather than keep touring that version, the band rebuilt it. The successor, Pink Floyd's The Wall – The Final Cut, had its premiere on the RTM Stage at Rotterdam Ahoy on 25 September 2026 at 20:00. It widens the source material from The Wall alone to The Wall and The Final Cut, with other material around them, and it is the band's largest staging to date: a fifty-strong children's choir, performers marching with flags and protest signs, and a production the band pitches as the biggest Wall concert mounted in Europe by a Pink Floyd tribute.

Ahoy describe that premiere as having sold out completely, and have rebooked the production into the same room for 22 October 2027.

Where they stand in November 2026

Twenty years on from 2006, the band is running three productions concurrently rather than one. Through November and December 2026 a reprise of The Wall – 45 Years is working the Dutch theatres — Theater Castellum in Alphen aan den Rijn on 4 November, Isala in Capelle aan den IJssel on the 5th, Junushoff in Wageningen on the 7th, Kunstlinie Almere on the 13th, Theater Heerlen on the 17th, then Barneveld and Hoorn — while Wish You Were Here takes the bigger rooms, including the Stadsschouwburg in Antwerp on 20 November 2026, the AFAS Circustheater in Scheveningen on 8 December and the DeLaMar in Amsterdam on 18 February 2027. A one-off, Pink Floyd in de NPO Radio 2 Top 2000, plays the Van Zantenhal in Nieuw-Vennep on 10 December 2026.

The anniversary itself is being marked by going backwards. A club tour billed The Full Circle (20 Years) returns the band to small venues, starting at De Bonte Wever in Assen on 18 December 2026 and Iduna in Drachten on the 19th, then Metropool Hengelo on 9 January 2027, De Basiliek in Veenendaal on 29 January, Neushoorn in their home city of Leeuwarden on 12 February and Podium Victorie in Alkmaar on 27 March. It is a greatest-hits run through the catalogue in rooms where the detail is audible without the projection wall.

The next big build is already dated. 50 Years of Animals & In The Flesh gets a try-out at the Poort Theater in Sneek on 4 March 2027, then opens properly at Theater de Voorveghter in Hardenberg on 12 March and Martiniplaza in Groningen on 13 March, running through the spring to Schouwburg Tilburg on 26 June 2027. Germany takes The Wall – The Final Cut in October 2027: the Steintor-Varieté in Halle on the 2nd, the Stadthalle in Chemnitz on the 3rd and the Kulturpalast in Dresden on the 4th, before the Ahoy return on the 22nd.

How it plays

The written record on these shows is thinner than the production values suggest, because Dutch theatre tributes are reviewed rarely. The fullest account remains Progwereld's notice of the XXL show in The Hague in December 2017: twenty-one songs across two sets and encores, material reaching from Meddle in 1971 to The Final Cut and The Division Bell, running about two and a half hours, with the guitar playing singled out for praise and the visual side called spectacular. That review was not uncritical — the sound was poor for the first half and only settled after the interval, and the reviewer thought the second male vocalist miscast — but the near-capacity audience of a thousand stood at the end.

The band's own account of The Wall 45 Years is that it drew several five-star notices, and audience comments on listings sites run the same way, with the recurring point being competence rather than spectacle: Pink Floyd is a hard band to cover and a single weak player exposes the whole thing, and the complaint does not come up. Echoes and The Great Gig in the Sky are the two pieces fans single out.