It is late June 2006, and a
stunning, wide-skied Lincolnshire afternoon. I have just graduated, and
alongside a few friends from Cambridge, many generations of the Kohut and
Cullum family are on deckchairs and benches in our newly-gazebo-ed garden for
my 21st birthday barbeque. A Lincolnshire barbecue has a very
particular scent: pig-manure on the fields mixed with the burnished herb and spice
blend of an over-cooked sausage.
Our garden was very long, and
impracticably thin. Horse stables running along the right, and the wall of our
neighbour’s bungalow on the left, rather pompously built up higher than our own
house. This patch of grass didn’t ever fully perform the function of a garden in the ‘English
Country’ sense. Sheep ran through it in a bid for freedom at least once each
month; my sister and I failed to persuade tennis balls to bounce on it to any
practical height; it flooded whenever the rains came for longer than ten minutes (causing my mother near heart-attack-inducing stress before the house was sold).
It was also often a muddy drive-way leading up a short bank to our fields at
the rear, with ‘uninterrupted views out to the Wolds’ (Estate Agent Brochure,
2007-2009). On this afternoon, owing to my widespread popularity and expansive
birthday guest list, cars were driving across the garden at regular intervals, and parking in the field.
My Grandmother and her sisters
(all three alike in look, temperament, and a predilection to think themselves
better than most) are lined up on a bench facing the garden-cum-drive, no
doubt positioned specifically to pass judgement on those arriving. At about
half past two (I am playing some kind of racket and ball game with a cousin’s
son) I hear the sound of a car skidding too fast down the gravel portion of
the drive by the house. Crossing the garden at speed is a bright blue open
top convertible with my former music teacher, and dear friend Andrew in the
driver’s seat, shirtless, hair spiked with blonde highlights, wearing
aviator-sunglasses, an array of neck-ware, tight jeans, and with a perfectly even, deep brown tan, waving with flamboyant abandon as he drives. Grandma and her sisters have faces that betrayed a mixture
of shock, awe, and confused lust.
It is one of my fondest memories
of Andrew, bulldozing into people’s lives with an unashamed declaration of who
he was.
Throughout these two
months of Andrew’s illness, many of his former students have been speaking of
how much he touched their lives. Like others, I’ve been trying to come to terms
with the possible, now actual loss of someone who was so fundamental in shaping
who I am: my tastes, my talents, my attitudes. I wrote a blog up here about being as much oneself as
possible at all times, so that achievements can be measured alongside who you are truly. I now realise that this was something I learned
from Andrew.
As a student of Andrew’s, I was
in awe of him. His manner of teaching was that of a musician and music lover:
we’d listen and he’d talk. During those four years, music became a history of
shattering moments: when Bach completed his 48 Preludes and Fugues and western harmony was set; the bass entry in
the first performance of Beethoven 9; the first resolution of the Tristan Chord in performance; the riot
at the premiere of The Rite of Spring,
the poor amateurs of Leeds Festival Chorus trying to sing Belshazzar’s Feast; the opening of the newly restored Coventry
Cathedral alongside Britten’s sublime, subversive War Requiem.
But for Andrew, music was much
more than simply a series of great works, and so too for his students. It was about
the live, real performance and experience of some of the world’s greatest noises. It is here that is influence is most keenly felt, day-to-day, amongst many
generations of Lincolnshire schoolchildren, and where his loss will be most
hard to bear for generations to come. I find it tough even writing about my
experience on stage at school, and Andrew’s role in that part of my life. In
those hours inside and outside of classrooms, in rehearsal rooms, in churches,
on stage, I learned to understand how music and theatre get inside your muscles
and sinews, works of art becoming absolutely tuned to your sense of self, part of
what makes you tick as you walk around in this flawed, clunky, ugly, real
world.
I consider myself so lucky to
have had a relationship with Andrew that developed from student to friend as
soon as I left King Edward. When I fell unrequitedly in love after about 45
minutes of being at University, he was the first person I called for advice (he’d
been there before, got the t-shirt, etc).
It has been such a tremendous privilege
to join him as a staff member on music tours to Belgium, to see for myself him
continuing to guide and shape the values of young people as he had done for me.
And goodness me, did we have fun.
I recently told Andrew that almost
all of my life’s greatest experiences can be traced directly back to his
influence or guidance. He scoffed, as you’d expect (for such a natural showman,
he was unexpectedly modest at times). I don’t for a second think this will
change now he’s gone. Whenever I sing, whenever I hear wonderful music, see a
great opera, whenever I drink coffee with at least 2 inches of Grand Marnier in
the bottom, it will be thanks to him.
One writes,
that `Other friends remain,'
That `Loss is
common to the race'—
And common is
the commonplace,
And vacant
chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is
common would not make
My own less
bitter, rather more:
Too common!
Never morning wore
To evening,
but some heart did break
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H
