Robert Pernet

Belgian jazz drummer, music critic and historian, born 15 October 1940 in Brussels, Belgium, died 27 February 2001. From 1957, Robert Pernet collected literally everything that had anything to do with jazz in Belgium. His collection includes over 7,000 records, hundreds of books and magazines, musical scores, programmes and photographs. It contains numerous remarkable individual pieces, but it is the collection itself, in its entirety that is exceptional, tracing as it does, alone, the entire history of jazz in Belgium. Without the collector’s relentless efforts, a great part of Belgium’s history of jazz would have fallen into oblivion. Currently, the Robert Pernet jazz collection is owned by the "King Baudouin Foundation".