Tribute to Keith by Jonathan Rea

(Jonathan was a school pupil at the time Keith was still teaching in Northern Ireland.  Jonathan's tribute remembers Keith from the days before his involvement with Christpoher Monk Instruments.)

I first met Keith 22 years ago when I was a pupil at Regent House School in Northern Ireland. Since then it has been my privilege to share a deep friendship with him – and with his family, which has gone far beyond the classroom. Thank you, Kathryn, for giving me this opportunity to reflect publicly on my teacher, mentor, friend and brother.

Officially it was Keith’s job to teach us music. In fact he did rather more. He was a genuine polymath, an enthusiast for life, who always kept his mind open to new concepts and ways of thinking, despite being instinctively conservative. He had a knowledge of literature and culture which would shame many an aspiring scholar. He was a talented linguist, a gifted public speaker, and he had a beautiful command of his mother tongue. Mind you – if a word didn’t exist he wasn’t averse to introducing it to the language – I once remember him rebuking an out of tune choir for singing with a high degree of “wonkitude.”

As pupils we couldn’t fail to respect Keith’s exceptional musical ability. Where other teachers might have played recordings to illustrate musical concepts, Keith shared his musicianship with us freely, often by playing very challenging live music on the piano just at the drop of a hat. He was also a fine bass singer – with a gutsy bottom C which I have coveted many times. We knew he was a composer, and we were lucky that as well as writing for adult choirs and proper grown up performers, he actually wrote things for us kids to sing and play.

Keith’s music was often innovative – always challenging, and highly memorable. No one who has heard the animal horns in Psalm 24 can have forgotten the impact of that piece, but my personal favourite is his exquisite setting of In the Bleak Midwinter with its intricate haunting harmonies – but so much of the fine music in his legacy was written for the young people he was teaching or the communities in which he lived. There was nothing selfish about his art.

But it is fair to say that Keith was not entirely without eccentricity in his approach to teaching. I suspect we were the only 2nd form class in the land who had to learn the characteristics of a Crumhorn and a Rauschpfeife for our Christmas exam. I further suspect that we were unusual in being able to listen to Bach’s two part inventions performed by a teacher who could with great fluency and accuracy whistle the upper part whilst simultaneously humming the lower.

Keith’s teaching was characterised by an unrivalled tendency to deviate from the subject in hand – and because he spoke with authority on so many issues, we would sometimes take advantage by inviting him to talk about things that were nothing to do with music just for fun – transubstantiation, the blind spot on the retina, the resignation of Margaret Thatcher, Greek yogurt, how to pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngychgogerychwryndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch – such was the often fascinating material of our lessons - and we were much the richer for the experience. (The word is allegedly the longest in the English language - it's a wee place in North Wales.)

In return for all this education we gave him despair – I remember him trying to teach a Northern Irish class the little round “My dame has a lame tame crane”, and seeing the physical pain on his face as he had to endure the sound of our dead vowels singing “My dame has a lame tame crane.”

(Of course the above anecdote has no impact in printed form so please click here for the true experience.)

But we could not subdue him indefinitely. At the end of the day Keith would often leave the room – turning off the light as he went by kicking the switch in a crazy John Cleese style manoeuvre. Invariably his aim was spot on.

From time to time we would travel to concerts in Keith’s car. This was of course before the Health and Safety Gestapo had taken over the world of education. His driving was awesome. He had a unique way of wrestling with the steering wheel as he went round a corner which I’ve never witnessed elsewhere. The memory of 10 people in a Renault Savannah will stick with me forever – I was one of the ones in the boot. Meanwhile Keith was in the driver’s seat explaining “It’s not that I drive fast – it’s just that I want to get where I’m going.”

The Keith I got to know in adulthood was a man I grew to admire very much. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who quite matched his combination of really high ability, coupled with genuine understated modesty. He was a true self-effacing gentleman. He was of course a partner in Christopher Monk Instruments, but I know he didn’t have a single commercial instinct in him – his work as an instrument maker was driven much more by aesthetic pleasure than by the hope that it might make him rich or famous. He even reeled at the idea of writing a short profile of himself for a CD or concert featuring his music. He was always slightly embarrassed to be referred to as a “musician” – and he was appalled by the self promoting tendencies of the commercial music industry.  He was a proper purist.

So what were the things that drove him? His family and friendships were a huge priority. It has always been obvious to me that Keith was a devoted husband, father and grandfather, but in the recent months of his illness it has been especially clear that the dearest earthly value he had was the company and support of his family circle.

He was also driven by the pursuit of excellence – not a perfectionist in the negative, obsessive-compulsive sense of the word – but an upholder of high standards in pretty much everything he did. He always aspired to do things well, whether making a serpent, playing music, or even making a decent cup of Earl Grey tea.

He was energised by the company of young people – genuinely interested to hear our often extremely garbled and arrogant ideas about life and the universe. He was incredibly affirming – with immense patience for young developing minds. As such he was a formative influence to many.

And I could stop there – but to do so would be an enormous injustice to his whole outlook on life. Because Keith Rogers was motivated more than anything else by pleasing the Lord in whose presence he now lives. He was never afraid to speak personally of the one who he invariably referred to as “Our Lord”. And when he spoke of his Master there was a passion and warmth which went beyond the manner in which he spoke at all other times.

Keith was not a lover of denominational labels. In a sense was too busy loving and serving Jesus to care whether he did so in the context of a Gospel Hall, a Baptist church, or within the Church of England. Years ago, I recall that he spoke at a Scripture Union meeting in school, where he challenged us with great passion to worry less about what other people thought of us, and more about how we please God, because in the end that’s all that counts. Keith knew the grace of God – and spoke often and openly about the power of God’s Word to change lives. He did this because the power was working in His own life, keeping him secure in his faith even as he faced the very difficult days of recent months.

I last saw Keith on December 30th, and I shared with him that I had felt especially moved to pray for the wellbeing and stability of his mind in recent months. The strength of his voice had all but gone, but he was able to say that although the process of dying was unknown, his destination was known, and had been all along. Those of us who care deeply about Keith have struggled big time to accept the circumstances he has faced in recent months. I for one had always imagined that we would still meet up when Keith would be in his 90s and I in my 60s, still sharing mutual friendship, and bouncing around ideas. And I am gutted that this won’t be possible.

As for Keith, he had come to a place where he accepted God’s authority, secure in the knowledge that there is a better world than this one, where through faith in Christ and by his grace, we shall see our friend again.

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