In a city dominated by musicians who were either born within reach of the lifeblood that feeds the city, The River Mersey, or those that came to Liverpool to study at L.I.P.A. or any other of the institutions that makes Liverpool the cultural hub of the country, too come across a man from Stechford in Birmingham who has become part of the music scene is a thrill.

A graduate of Keele University, Luke Moore took the plunge in 2011 to make music his full time work. Since then he has written for a variety of clients, ranging from scoring the soundtrack to a night such as Chester’s Christmas Lights parade, to providing solo cello, piano and string sections for a range of great singer-songwriters and bands. He has also been able to find time to perform live shows alongside Kaya as part of the extended line up of The Science of the Lamps, and with Gary Edward Jones, both artists that he admires for their writing, easy-going nature and unwavering professionalism.

I need go no further in my own mind to know how good he is that to read that a musician I admire, the woman from the Faroe Islands, Greta Svabo Bech says of him that, “From when I first started performing and recording with Luke some years ago, he has always been extremely easy to work with. He has a strong ear and a feel for arranging, is a professional performer, and has always been very helpful with his advice.”

It is with growing excitement that I manage to meet up with Luke and once we have exhausted conversations about playing golf in Birmingham, the 1990 World Cup and his time at Keele University, we get round to the important part of the day, music.

You are a very busy man and you have a lot going on in your life, what can people expect of you in the year ahead?

“A lot and as a writer and as a composer a lot of the work I do is with other musicians. One of the things I have deliberately avoided is learning to sing and I think that anyone who has ever heard me sing at them when I have been work-shopping material will say that’s probably a good idea that I avoided it! So one of the beauties of what I do is work with different singers-the lyrics I have worked on myself and also with a loose band or collaboration, that type of set up. So one of the things I am going to be working on this year is expanding my network of contacts, especially vocalists and using that for my material, one of smaller projects and of course the Threshold Festival and also being involved with some of the other singers in terms of song-writing and offering support there. What happened a lot last year were people coming to me with books of lyrics and they have been asking me to put music together so there was some nice collaboration going on.

In terms of my own writing, the advantage of not being a singer myself, is the opportunity to work with talented, varied and dedicated vocalists across different genres, such as Mersey Wylie, who joined me twice on Dave Monks’ B.B.C. Radio Merseyside show at the tail end of last year. In terms of scale though, it was really exciting to have 70 singers perform the Christmas song I wrote for the Chester Lights switch-on and the rest of the music that night reaching such a large audience.”

You have worked closely with Kaya from Science of the Lamps on the E.P. that they released last year.

“That was a fantastic E.P. I love it.  It is one of the things I like putting on and listening to and that doesn’t always happen with stuff that you have worked on especially if it’s something you get really close to. When you have spent a lot of time in the studio, sometimes you are keen to move onto the next thing and hope that the previous thing does well.

 In the case of The Science of the Lamps, I love Kaya’s writing, I really like what she does especially when playing with the words and for someone who uses English as a second language she does it in such an adept way! The material has got that real charm, with dashes of Film Noir written all over it and a nod to the Brothers Grimm. I was playing some cello, piano and glockenspiel last night with the guys at rehearsal with a view to their upcoming live shows and it’s a lot of fun. That’s what music is all about. Its instruments like the glockenspiel and the music box it has this really scary but child-like fairy-tale quality and I think they are onto something there.”

How much input did you have into the songs on the E.P.?

“I’ll be honest, not much apart from the arrangement for the string parts but hand on hand I think the strings I wrote for Duckling Hell and Secret of Orion are up there with some of the best work I have done as session arrangements and the reason for that especially in Duckling Hell I had to really get into Kaya’s mindset with the lyrics and as an arranger that’s sometimes the biggest challenge. In this case, I was aiming to see the band and producer Mark Brocklesby’s face light up when they heard it back and a few of the reviews picked that up as a particular strand. I don’t often quote other music in arrangements but it felt right for this – I managed to put a bit of Swan Lake and Le Cygne (The Swan) from Saint-Saens’ The Carnival of The Animals so there is a little bit of that in there and it was nice to put that in and it really supports the lyric.

Like a lot of the string section session work I do, for this we had Greta Svabo Bech on violin and Hardanger and I could quite happily work with her every day!  She is so down to earth, so talented and she has done some amazing things herself with her various bands. I have fortunate enough to have her on board for a lot of violin sessions and her singing voice is something that I recommend to some of the students I teach to go off and listen to!”  

 Are you looking forward to the Threshold Festival?

“Yeah I can’t wait!  I’m looking forward to playing with The Science of the Lamps, with Gary Edward Jones on the Liverpool Acoustic stage and of course my own slot. We are already talking about the kind of line up that we are going to have. The great thing about The Science of the Lamps set up is that it is very collaborative, other musicians will come in and do their thing and that makes it a bit more special as a whole, there is that flexibility and everyone is quite welcome to put their ideas on the table.  The results at Threshold promise to be pretty amazing.”

You seem to look at music in a very different way because you are not seeing it from a frontman’s point of view.

“That’s right. I’ve been told that I look at it from the whole package rather than just a smaller part and sometimes I’m the first to suggest that something I’ve added might not work in the finished product.  I’m never precious about the work I do, I prefer to listen to the whole rather than just “my bits”.  That’s not to be derogatory in anyway but it comes from the background that I have and from playing in orchestral set ups and chamber music groups as well as my influences including a lot of instrumental, film and video game music, as well as bands and solo artists.

That said, I can remember hearing the Beatles track Eleanor Rigby and hearing the intro and asking my dad what was that low string sound and being told the cello and then wanting to play that instrument!  I was lucky that the school I went to, Sir Wilfrid Martineau, had the proviso of being attached to the arts because of the views of the school’s patron and namesake. I was lucky to have that support from a very young age. So yes, maybe I do look at music in a bit of a different way, perhaps not in a way that a lot of bands would, and in an atmospheric way that tells a bit of a story. It might come from not being a lyricist first and foremost but I’ve always felt it’s useful to be able to tell part of a story with just the music, so you still get the feel of the song and a particular narrative.”

You are not from Liverpool, so how do you feel as Stechford in Birmingham is not exactly known for its musical output, does it make it an oddity?

“No I don’t think so – I feel as though I am less from Stechford but from Birmingham which has an immensely wonderful musical heritage, though I’ve lived in the North West for almost ten years now which is most of my adult life.  The two musical scenes between Liverpool and Birmingham are pretty different though.  Maybe it’s fair to say historically that bands like Black Sabbath wouldn’t come out of Liverpool and The Beatles wouldn’t come out Birmingham, who knows.

 There’s a different heritage with Liverpool being a port city and all the Irish influence sand Rock n’ Roll coming here from all over the world but as a hub of creativity, Liverpool is a very special place creatively and I’ve come to really love a lot of what happens there. I think that’s something I like about this city, I love working with people from here, not only though from Liverpool but whoever brings their musical culture. I think that no matter where you are from you can choose your own influences. George Martin’s arranging for example made me want to get into strings.”

It is funny how much you and your work reminds me of arguably the finest musician to come out of Birmingham, Jeff Lynne from E.L.O.

“Thanks, that’s a big compliment!  There was a documentary on the B.B.C. where he talked about his process and views on music which was fascinating. I’m not really that big a fan of E.L.O as such but having spent some time incorporating string sections into band set ups, the aesthetic was quite similar, it was only something I noticed watching it and thinking “hello I have missed a trick here”!    

What is next for you?

“My next original project is being put together especially for Threshold festival in March. I’m collaborating with film-maker and musician Richard Geraghty to work on a mixture of our musical material set to some accompanying short films. I find I tend to write a lot with imagery in mind and I have always taken inspiration from film music, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith and Clint Mansell for example, so this project will be a great way to explore that, in the company of some very talented musicians.  After that, there’s a few recording projects on the horizon with some new clients as well as people I’ve worked with before and at some point this year, I’m aiming to record more of my material with some fantastic guest musicians lined up”.

Ian D. Hall