Brass instruments are in the genes, Matua trumpet player Garry Hoekstra, 65, says.

He started at 13 in his native Holland and would have started younger, but he was not allowed to.

“My parents wouldn’t let me (play). They stopped me because I was not performing too well at school,” Hoekstra said.

Eventually, his parents would let Hoekstra play, and he joined a family with generations of brass bands in the blood.

“They gave me a trumpet, brand new, and I started to play,” he said.

His passion stemmed from his uncle, who taught the first lesson and was a proficient church organist.

His uncle was also involved in brass bands.

Utrecht, Netherlands. Photo / 123RF

Hoekstra’s life in Zeist, a large town in the Utrecht province of Holland, remained relatively unchanged until 1981.

“Suddenly things changed,” he said.

An aunt who had immigrated to New Zealand in 1952 came to visit, and he decided to move there too.

He packed his bags for New Zealand despite objections from his family.

Tragedy struck five weeks into his new journey.

His mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and subsequently died.

She left him money in a savings account, and he received her “blessing” to move to another country.

Although he enjoyed playing the trumpet, he admits that he would have thrown it aside if it were not for joining a church music team.

“It was just the encouragement that they gave to me.”

One quirk of playing with the church team was the different musical keys they would perform in, he said.

“Trumpets are in a key setting of B flat, but the music we have in the church is on a different key, in a different pitch.”

Hoekstra learnt that he needed to transpose everything in a note higher.

“It was hard.”

While he was in Holland, visiting his mother, he had to “hand back the trumpet, that was theirs”.

Hoekstra, said the trumpet was the last connection he had with his mother. Photo / Tom Eley

He decided to use the money left to him by his mother to purchase a French-made Antoine Courtois trumpet.

The instrument boasted two different slides, one in B flat and the other in the key of C, allowing the instrument to go up a key and hold higher notes.

“It was a fantastic feature,” he said.

The trumpet would go everywhere he went, until one day in 1986, it would disappear after leaving the instrument in his car.

“Somebody decided to borrow it without asking me,” he said.

“They stole it.”

“Apart from the original mouthpiece.”

He was told to forget about the trumpet until, in 1993, he got a lead from a friend. Photo / Tom Eley

Hoekstra’s unique trumpet was gone, but the community’s generosity saw another trumpet donated to him.

He would do some “plumbing” on the trumpet, shortening it with a hacksaw and raising the replacement to the key of C.

“But the quality just wasn’t there.”

Seven years would go by, and eventually, he looked for a replacement for his trumpet, Hoekstra said.

He needed to look for something a bit better.

He began ringing up musicians and contacts, looking for a good-quality trumpet.

“If at all possible, a key of C trumpet.”

He was told to forget about the trumpet until, in 1993, he got a lead from a friend on a trumpet in the correct key that had been bought in an auction.

After being told by his friend that the trumpet was Antoine Courtois’ trumpet, Hoekstra’s ears perked up.

“I couldn’t believe it. I had completely given up on that instrument.”

He decided to ring the instrument’s owner and organise a visit with his wife and five-month-old daughter.

After convincing the owner that the trumpet was his, he reconnected with the last thing his mother had left behind for him.

“I felt like taking the trumpet back home.”

Hoekstra with his self-built penny-farthing bike. Photo / Tom Eley

In the years after his wife died, he constructed three penny-farthing bikes and helped restore the Ann Johson glider hanging in the Classic Flyers Museum in Mt Maunganui.

He still plays the trumpet, joining the ukele band at Jack Dusty’s Ale House in Otūmoetai every Monday and occasionally playing at St Peter’s Church in Tauranga.

Hoekstra said he is still learning the trumpet and is far from a master of the instrument.

“Playing an instrument is just a continuous learning,” he said. “The road of learning is like that all the way until the day you die.