Remembering David Munrow (1942-1976)

As an early music fan, I have a lot to thank David Munrow for. Although he died before I was interested in music, his influence on the early music scene and on so many of my favourite performers was profound. He had been at Pembroke College, Cambridge, a few years before me and people still talked about his astonishing college performance with a bagful of assorted pipes he'd collected on a trip to South America (indeed I've just heard Christopher Hogwood talk about that very concert on the Radio 3 programme about Munrow that provoked me to write this). Though I gather that one had to be careful in refering to him in Pembroke at the time, as he had apparently eloped with the wife of one of the dons. Even although at the time I wasn't musical, I remember the shock when I heard of his in 1976. His recordings delight me, but the interest and buzz he created have shaped my musical world so much that it's hard to imagine how much poorer my world would have been without his brief appearance, a comet flashing across the sky, for that short time 30-odd years ago.