Trombonist Stephen Sykes plays tune 'which saved my life'

A musician who beat an aggressive form of cancer has recovered to play the tune fellow musicians helped saved his life with.

Musicians across the world raised up to £100,000 by playing JA Greenwood's composition The Acrobat, in aid of trombonist Stephen Sykes.

He needed an expensive drug so his body did not reject stem cell treatment.

Mr Sykes, from Somerset, has since recovered from Hodgkin's lymphoma enough to play the solo at a concert.

Musicians had taken part in the Acrobat Challenge, where they paid £5 and posted a clip of their performance online before nominating three musicians to do the same.

Stephen Sykes said he could barely lift his trombone earlier this year

Mr Sykes, who played the solo with Midsomer Norton and Radstock Silver Band on Saturday, said at times he did not have the strength to even hold the instrument.

"Ten days ago I was struggling to hold the instrument up to my face for 10 minutes let alone play 10 minutes of a solo," he said.

"You get to the stage with it when you are at your worst where you want to survive it for the effort everyone else has made - especially my mum and another trombone player Jayne Murril who helped massively with the Acrobat Challenge.

"It's not the tune I would have picked to save my life, but I guess when it's a lifesaving piece of music any of them will do."

Mr Sykes was diagnosed in February 2016 and had received six sessions of chemotherapy but none were successful.

His consultant told the family his best hope of receiving a life-saving stem cell transplant was to treat him with a new drug called a PD1 blocker.

The cash was then raised to pay for the drug which would help save his life.

His mother Joanne provided the stem cells despite being only a 50% match, with the rare transplant procedure taking place last December.

In March, Mr Sykes had a PET-CT scan which confirmed he was cancer-free.