Alison Stephens, Britain's top mandolin player, and one of the pre-eminent performers in the world of that curious stringed instrument - whose name comes from the Italian for almond - died earlier this month of cancer. She was 40.
Her story is one of great talent, raucous humour and personality and the absolute role that can sometimes be played - in any of our lives - by chance.
She came to Hong Kong several times, but the first was in 2000 as part of a small ensemble bringing a theatrical version of Louis de Bernieres' massively best-selling novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin to the Fringe Club. It was, by a turn of luck, the only authorised performance version of the book, and in the next years it would be enacted some 600 times.
Stephens' fortunes had just turned full circle. She had taken up the mandolin aged seven, just after her father had died. It was an instrument he used to play her - having played it himself as a soldier during the war - and when she got to choose an instrument there was no other choice.
She had to wait four years to get a teacher, and when her mother found her one - in the form of the eccentric Hugo D'Alton - he initially said he didn't have time to teach anyone else, certainly didn't teach children and absolutely certainly didn't teach girls. But he offered to start her off with a few exercises and 11 years later, when she graduated from Trinity College of Music, he was still her teacher.
'In the early 90s things were tough for Ali,' says Mike Maran, Stephens' friend and collaborator on Captain Corelli. 'She was getting some concerts, but she was also washing dishes, working as a check-out girl, really struggling.'
One of her favourite quotes, though it was not ultimately true for her, was by the late, great swing mandolin player Jethro Burns: 'My advice to all aspiring young musicians - learn to play the mandolin and nothing else. Each new instrument you learn to play only opens up another field of unemployment. As a mandolin player you may not be working but at least you know what kind of work you are out of.'