About Simon D’souza
Diagnosis and Illness
Simon was 48 and on holiday in France with his wife Susan in August 2012 when headaches became more severe and he started to forget words, with no other symptoms a scan revealed that he had a serious brain tumor. He was flown back to the UK for surgery at Hurstwood Park, Haywards Heath Hospital which was successful, however the diagnosis was an aggressive and terminal Grade IV Gliablastoma. Simon went on through radio and chemotherapy and lived a further 21 months. He died on 19th May 2014 at St. Peter & St. James Hospice in Chailey in Sussex where he received outstanding care.
Musical Career and Contributions
He was a jazz musician, composer and educator who during his life had been involved with a wide range of community music groups and bands in the Brighton & Hove area.
He played in everything from jazz quartets to big bands, his teaching career started at Community Music in London a charity music education organisation, where he ran teacher training, jazz improvisation and rap workshops.
He went on to set up AudioActive a youth music project and ‘Saxshop’ a community saxophone workshop, both of which are still running over 20 years later.
Simon had huge energy and drive, he created composed for and ran several large scale community events mainly as part of the Brighton fringe festival, including a performance of 100 saxophones.
Simon had just started to run an HND in Jazz at Chichester College, he loved his work and his students.
Final Works and Legacy
When he was diagnosed he knew that time was short and set about writing a new album of music for a 17 piece big band ‘Straight no Chaser’, recorded this, finished his MA at Sussex University in composition, which he passed with Distinction, and wrote a musical soundtrack called the Journey Down for a computer games company Skygoblin which went on to win an independent award for best game soundtrack.
His final work ‘Only Breath’ was performed in February 2014 by The Studio 9 Orchestra and was based on the ancient poems of Rumi about life, love and death.
Passion, Positivity and Advocacy
Simon loved music and loved involving people in playing it together and having fun. He had so much more he wanted to do and bravely approached his illness with incredible positivity. The music community in Brighton showed him a lot of love that helped sustain him through this hard time as his health deteriorated. He fund raised throughout his illness for the Brain Tumour Charity and was determined to find more medical trials options and progress to help people like him to live longer. Sadly no trials were available to Simon but we hope that in the future this will change so that we don’t lose more people like him before their time.
