A pianist from Littleport will pay tribute to a late celebrated recording studio owner with a concert next month in Cambridge.

Asa Albert Jolson Junior came within a whisker of losing his life in a car crash on the Swiss Alps in 1969.

Albert spent six months in a coma but after recovering realised his dream, to own and operate the hugely successful Masterlink Recording Studio on Nashville’s Music Wall.

Albert, who died earlier this year aged 67, will be honoured on July 4 at St Columba’s Church, Downing Street, by a piano recital from Neil Colledge on an equally historic instrument – the last Erard Concert Grand created in Paris that now residing in the city.

Mr Colledge said: “We first met when I was resident pianist at the Waldorf hotel. He was unfailingly polite, civilised, cultivated, with beautiful old-world manners.

“Whenever Jolie was in town, I received an invitation to join him for afternoon tea.

“It is the most profound disappointment, that I never had time to take up his suggestion that we should work together in Nashville.”

The Erard piano was completed between 1831-32, around the same time as the birth of King Leopold of Belgium, the creation of the French Foreign Legion and the first paying guests entered New York’s Waldorf Astoria.

Mr Colledge will perform works by Scarlatti, Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Clementi and Chopin.

The concert begins at 4pm. Tickets are £6 and are available at the door.