Derick Nangle, a 26-year-old music therapy major at Florida

 

FORT MYERS BEACH, FL — Though it might sound like it isn't the most likely setting, Fort Myers Beach residents and visitors regularly enjoy front-row seats to a personal tuba performance each week.

Derick Nangle, a 26-year-old music therapy major at Florida Gulf Coast University, walks the beach weekly, playing the large instrument — a 1929 sousaphone — or, occasionally, a trombone.

"I play anything — pop, jazz, rock and roll," he said. "I just want to make people smile."

He's happy to take requests from beachgoers; one of the more common is "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver.

Nangle's personal favorites are "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers and "Boogie Shoes" by KC and the Sunshine Band.

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"I love to get people moving," he said.

The Fort Myers resident also knows firsthand the power of music.

The Orlando native had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball for much of his life and suffered from epilepsy because of it.

When he was 19, he underwent a major surgery, a half temporal lobectomy. Afterward, while recovering at UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville, he worked with an onsite music therapist, as well as an occupational therapist. That's when he was first drawn to the field, choosing it as his major.

He started his musical journey when he was about 12 years old, first playing the trombone, followed by the string bass.

"I didn't start playing the tuba until high school," Nangle said. "But it got me performance work out of high school, playing old jazz on the tuba and string bass."

Working with a music therapist after his surgery just reinforced what he already knew.

"Music can change lives," he said.

Music therapy is an emerging field, he added, and so far, he's been moved by the work he's done through internships, working with children with developmental disabilities.

"But playing for people is also something I love," Nangle said. "That's why I started doing it up and down the coast."

He started performing on the beach in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, after his university allowed students to return to campus housing.

"It was a way to get out and connect with people," he said. "I got a lot of positive reinforcement and just kept it going."

After Hurricane Ian pummeled the area at the end of September 2022, Nangle stopped playing on the beach for several months.

"There are not a lot of people out there and it just makes me sad," he said.

But he's forcing himself back out there each week as a way to give back to the community as it recovers from Ian.

"I'm trying to go every Saturday again, like I used to, just to support local venues out there trying to build their businesses back again," he said.

Though a tree fell on the home he was renting during the hurricane, Nangle wasn't as affected by the storm as so many others he knows.

"I have many friends and acquaintances who were very impacted," he said.

He recalls the first time he saw the beach after Ian had passed.

"It was a couple of days after the storm, my first day driving out there, and it was horrendous," he said.

Nangle said he's inspired by the businesses who are not only rebuilding but who are serving the community at the same time.

"The Beach Bar has its truck out there serving people. Mojo's Coffee Shop is trying to do the same thing and you have the FK (Your Diet) food truck out there cooking people hamburgers," he said. "So, I'm doing what I can, getting back out there to get people movin’ and groovin’ a little bit."