BENJAMIN CROFT

BENJAMIN CROFT GREW up in Sheffield in the 80s, and took piano and trumpet lessons from the age of seven. He would soon fall under the spell of Mahler, Bartók and Stravinsky. But then, when he was 16, he found his true calling thanks to a certain progressive rock icon.

“I saw Rick Wakeman,” he tells . “This was the 90s, I’d never heard of him, and I was like, ‘Wow!’ My mother said, ‘Well, if you like that then you might want to listen to ’” He brandishes his beloved vinyl copy of . “And that literally changed my life. Wakeman was my hero. I’d hated piano until then, but from that moment on I practised eight hours a day. I discovered artists like ELP, UK, Weather Report, Return To Forever, Allan Holdsworth, and that was it for me. That’s what I wanted to do with my life.”