A widower hopes his wife’s love for music will be shared by generations to come after donating the instrument she loved to a youth band.<\/p>\n
Andrew Keirl has given the glockenspiel owned by his wife Alison to Cornwall Youth Brass Band with the epitaph: “May the music play on”.<\/p>\n
Alison played piano and violin before being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a teenager. She struggled to continue playing her instruments so Andrew suggested she try the glockenspiel instead.<\/p>\n
Andrew said: “Alison retired after 40 years in the NHS last year and we both joined St Breward Silver Band. In a cruel twist of fate, just three weeks later she suffered a stroke and died in April.”<\/p>\n
Andrew, a retired optometrist from Liskeard in Cornwall, said Alison spent a year in hospital being treated for her arthritis.<\/p>\n
He was a brass band conductor at the time and, when Alison struggled to play piano and violin, he suggested she try the glockenspiel, which could be played with sticks.<\/p>\n
Alison took to the instrument “like a duck to water” and loved playing it, Andrew said.<\/p>\n
When they were married 29 years previously, he gave her a top-of the-range glockenspiel as a wedding present.<\/p>\n
After her death, Andrew said he did not want the instrument “stood in a corner gathering dust”.<\/p>\n
“I wanted it to be used, and I’m sure Alison would as well, to help young people,” said Andrew. <\/p>\n
He added: “Music is so important for youngsters, banding in particular, for communication, team building, trust.<\/p>\n
“I moved around the country over the years and as a bander you find the nearest band suddenly you’re in a strange town but you’ve got 25 new friends.<\/p>\n
“It’s an absolutely wonderful thing to do and to encourage these youngsters by donating a decent quality instrument for them to use is really what I wanted to do,” he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A widower hopes his wife’s love for music will be shared by generations to come after donating the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-685868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}