He was natural around Kiev in Ukraine, the boy of the conductor Karel Mengelberg, who was himself a nephew of the conductor Willem Mengelberg. He briefly exposed architecture before entering a Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he studied music from either 1958 to 1964. Piece there he won number one prize at the jazz festival inside Loosdrecht and became associated with Fluxus. His early influences involved Thelonious Monk and John Cage, who he heard lecture at Darmstadt.

His number 1 appearance in record get on Eric Dolphy's last album, Survive Date (1964). As well thereon record was a drummer Han Bennink, and the children of them, together sustaining Piet Noordijk formed a quartet which experienced a total of different bassists, & which played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. Within 1967 he co-founded a Instant Composers Pool, an organisation which promoted avant garde Dutch jazz performances & recordings, by using Bennink and Willem Breuker.

Mengelberg has played by having the big kind of musicians. He has typically performed within the duo by using fellow Dutchman Bennink, by using more collaborators including Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker and (on the flip side of the survive recording sustaining Dolphy) his pet parrot. He has too written music for others to perform (typically allowing the few room for improvisation) & has overseen a total of music theatre productions, which usually include the big element of absurdist humour.