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27th October 2024 in Community, News

Tributes paid to the musician and well known resident Gudrun Edwards

At our 2024 AGM, Shiona Williams, Kew Society Chair, added the many tributes paid to Gudrun Edwards who died peacefully at home on the 30 September 2024 after a period of declining health.  

Gudrun was well-known to local residents and music lovers for her distinguished contribution to all levels of music and her stalwart work as a past patron of the Kew Society, from 2016 until 2022 where she is remembered for showing great interest, caring and commitment towards the local community.

She also delighted concert audiences as leader of the Kew Sinfonia for 30 years – seen below at a concert in 2010.

Gudrun Edwards pictured in 2010, playing the lead violin with the Kew Sinfonia

Gudrun moved to Kew with her late husband, David, in 1965 and  lived in the same house for 59 years. During that time, she co-founded and led the Kew Sinfonia, from their inaugural concert in 1986 to her final concert as leader in 2016,  and it was fitting that the most recent Kew Sinfonia concert on 12th October was dedicated to  Gudrun’s memory.

Gudrun also led the Richmond Orchestra from 1989 to 1999, and gave  numerous concerts in local venues, either as a piano/violin duo or as part of chamber music  ensembles.

Her passion for music was something which her mother had heroically managed to give her, along with a broader love of literature and the arts, in the most trying of circumstances in her native Bavaria, during  the years immediately following the end of the Second World War.

Whilst having to go out with her children to beg for eggs, milk and  bread, and to forage in the local forests for berries, Gudrun’s mother somehow procured a piano for the house and a small violin for her seven-year-old Gudrun, and setting the course of the rest of her life.

Gudrun is survived by her 3 children, Martin, Andrew and Juliet, and eight grand-children. She was 86. 

Mary Done, TKS Member

A tribute written on behalf of the family can be read here

You can read more about Gudrun’s remarkable life and contribution to Kew in our upcoming Kew Society member’s Magazine.

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