High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hageman was born and raised in Leeuwarden, Friesland, Netherlands. He was the son of Maurits Hageman of Zutphen and Hester Westerhoven of Amsterdam. A child prodigy, he was a concert pianist by the age of six. He studied in Amsterdam and gave lessons as a piano teacher. As a young man he was an accompanist for singers and with the Amsterdam Royal Opera Company, of which he became the conductor in 1899. For a short time he was accompanist to Mathilde Marchesi in Paris.He travelled to the United States in 1906 to accompany Yvette Guilbert on a national tour. He stayed and eventually became an American citizen.