To this day, little is known about exactly how he died. He is buried in the local cemetery, and the village school is named after him. It’s shocking, Braimah says, to think that Captain Ball was his age when his plane crashed near the village of Annoeullin in northern France. His older sister Jeneba, a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2018, will accompany him this evening on the piano, and his whole family, including younger brother Sheku, 19, who won that same award in 2016, will be in the audience. Kanneh-Mason knows much about music’s ability to unite a family he is one of seven preposterously talented musician siblings, a veritable modern-day Von Trapp-style troupe of cellists, pianists and violinists. “He was an inspiration to everyone, I think, but he was very shy as well and he needed time for solitude, time to think deeply and play his violin. “I’ve been hearing about Uncle Albert all my life,” says Vanda, whose walls in her sunny Leicestershire living room are hung with portraits of the great uncle she never met. He is said to have played the beloved instrument every evening outside the solitary little hut he built for himself on the airfield, in the quiet moments before the sounds of the alarm would see him leap into his plane, and hurtle his SE58 through the skies over the Western Front. But to his descendants, and the men who served alongside him, he has been remembered for more than his extraordinary talents as an airman.įor Vanda Day, Captain Ball’s great niece, it is her Great Uncle Albert’s treasured violin which still means so much to her family. “His name is always to be thought of first among the many distinguished air fighters whom Great Britain and her Dominions produced during the War,” as one historian grandly declared. To this day he is hailed as one of the most important figures in the British air effort in WWI. The Red Baron (the legendary German WWI pilot, Manfred von Richthofen) described him as one of his greatest ever opponents thanks to his extraordinary hit rate - in less than a year he amassed 44 confirmed “kills”, and another 25 unconfirmed. The first true celebrity fighter pilot, Captain Ball was vastly popular with the public because of his “lone wolf” style of combat flying, which would see him stalk his prey from below, often flying just 15 feet directly underneath a German plane. You may never have heard his name, but for a brief moment in our history, the 20-year-old soldier from Nottingham was a national hero. By all accounts a handsome, modest, slightly eccentric young man and a fierce fighter, who in his short time serving in the Royal Flying Corps during World War One became known as one of the greatest British pilots of all time. Their name cloaked in mystery, the story of heroism becoming more elaborate as the years pass, their photographs and commendations displayed proudly, peeked at by generations of wide-eyed children through the glass of a gloomy medals case.Ĭaptain Albert Ball was one such hero. A tale passed down through the family, of an old war hero uncle who once performed great feats of bravery on some far flung battlefield. While many Violinmakers are lucky if they can afford to buy the books in which rare, historical instruments are illustrated, I consider these opportunities to actually handle and examine such specimens invaluable to my craft.Many of us have a story like it. Ltd., where I had the opportunity to work on and study some of the oldest, most significant and treasured instruments in existence. Frequent visits to important historical violinmaking centres and exhibitions in cities such as Cremona, Brescia, Genoa and Vienna provided rare opportunities to study some of the world's finest instruments first-hand.Īfter graduating I accepted a position in the Toronto restoration workshop of Geo. This 3.5 year full-time program was an intense immersion in traditional, golden-period Italian violinmaking covering: practical skills and theoretical knowledge the history, art and science of stringed instruments as well as repair and restoration techniques including bow rehairing. After an initial apprenticeship with my opa - Canadian luthier Ernie Schmidt, I moved to Germany to learn the language and take the Mittenwald Violinmaking School entrance exam. For over 150 years this world-renowned violinmaking school has trained instrument makers, many of whom went on to become important Masters. Former students have even founded new violin making schools using Mittenwald as their model.
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