Name: Ben Francis
Qualifications & Place of Study: 10+ years writing, gigging and recording and 3 years teaching music professionally. Songwriter in a successful Glastonbury Emerging Talent shortlisted band. Our album ‘Hopefuls’ (2020) received a four-star review in Rolling Stone Magazine DE Songs I wrote or co-wrote have been played on BBC Introducing and BBC 6 Music. As for place of study – my own bedroom mainly, or wherever there is a piano to be played!
Favourite show played: Bingley Music Live 2017, Brudenell Social Club or the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
Desert Island Disc: Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, or if I can cheat and have a box set, Citizen by Steely Dan
What you love about music: Music is an abundant gift from God which intensifies the vibration of reality, lifts up our senses and has a profound effect on our being!
Motto: Perfect love casts out fear. (1 John 4:17)
Bio: I’m a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (piano, bass guitar, guitar) who moved to Leeds in 2011 and never looked back. As well as playing in bands, I love to teach, inspire confidence and watch people grow musically – I have led amateur choirs, accompanying on piano and writing original harmony arrangements. A staff choir that I led at my last workplace went from no performing experience at all to singing in front of an audience of 200 people. In the last few years I’ve been turning my attention more to teaching and loving being able to pass on what I’ve learned, to kids and adults alike.