My name is Richard Woolley. I was Dean of Film & Television at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and overlapped with Ben for part of the time that he was Dean of Music there.

In fact, I sat on his interview panel and knew that he was the right person for the job straightaway - warm, empathetic, erudite and a highly skilled musician with a natural talent for helping those starting out. We bonded both as colleagues and friends and I got to know him and Katia well during the two years before my return to England in 2005.

After that, and especially after his return to the UK in 2013, and despite my back and forth routine to New Zealand, we remained good friends and the Cruft household in Dorset Road became a kind of second home whenever I was in London. After Katia's death in 2013, Ben and I would always do a concert, or a play, or a gallery or a walk when I came to stay, and Ben - not an early riser by nature - would always ensure that he was up to say goodbye when I took my morning train back to Yorkshire (see gallery pic). He also ensured that my (what he called 'weird') food habits were catered for, and alongside the gourmet cheeses and other delicacies that filled his fridge to the full, I'd find the goat yogurt, rice milk, mixed seeds and so on that he had bought in for me, displayed for easy access. The only condition was that I take the leftovers home!

There are so many stories I could tell of my friendship with Ben. From the pleasure of watching and listening to him do solo Bach or play in his trio at the church in Brighton, to a madcap visit to the Garrick Club after a summons from his friend Rhodri, when Ben decided he had no suitable shoes and had to buy a new pair (very expensively) at a late night shop off Shaftesbury Avenue, and I had no suit and had to be kitted out in one of Ben's cast offs, several sizes too large - all worthwhile hurdles, we decided afterwards, as the meal and conversation at the club were excellent!

So - partly because its culmination was recorded (see link below), and partly because it shows how Ben was game for anything musically as long as there were notes to follow - I have decided to briefly tell the tale of the time Ben was persuaded to play Country style violin, complete with Cowboy hat and vest, as part of a Variety Show put on at the Academy to celebrate its 20th anniversary and mark the departure of its then director Mr Lo Kingman.

Ben, among his many musical activities, was a seasoned session player, and so filling in with string riffs to bolster the banal three and a half chords of much pop, country, folk and rock music was not new to him. Well, not new to him in the safety and anonymity of a recording studio, because, though he had once done a tour of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells in a more standard orchestral format, he had not been, as far as I knew, asked to stand as solo violin alongside a drummer, keyboard and electric bass players, two saxophonists and Canton Pop’s top female backing vocalists, in front of a 1000 plus audience.   

But he batted not an eyelid, organised an arranger to get my song (applauding in a humorous Johnny Cash style manner Mr Lo’s time as director at the academy) out of its primitive four-four strum mode and properly scored for proper musicians to play from. He set up rehearsal space in the Music School, acted as interpreter to me (the only person with no music to read) when he called for a re-start at three bars before ‘B’ and, in his firm but civil manner, chivvied the whole thing into place.

I think we had two rehearsal sessions, and then decided it would ‘be alright on the night’. He and I rummaged around in the huge Academy costume store and found ourselves the necessary kit and the result you can see in the shortened clip below. Luckily Ben’s microphone worked well, so you will hear his dulcet tones clearly as he battles to stay on board (or, perhaps, keep the ship afloat) with a drummer who had set off far faster than we had rehearsed, saxophones that could not be heard because their mikes were off and a singer more used to singing solo.

For me, the stars are Ben and the backing singers faithfully producing notes from manuscript paper on their music stands with the enthusiasm and musicality only professional musicians can manage – despite the most challenging of contexts.

Thank you, dear Ben, for your endless support and patience on that occasion and for the pleasure your ‘real’ playing gave me at your Brighton concerts and elsewhere. 

https://vimeo.com/234860425?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=69755490 (quality not the best, I'm afraid, but it's all I have)