Christopher Moore – Piano four hands secondo

Christopher started his musical career when he was very young: ‘my grandmother played piano, organ and violin and sat me on her knee at the piano as a baby to get me interested!’ He started piano lessons when he was eight, oboe at eleven and organ at thirteen. He worked for a firm of organ builders for a year after school and then read music at Durham University, where he played the organ a lot.  

Christopher taught in schools and churches in Dorset, London and Sussex before moving to Cambridge in 1986 to take up the post of Director of Music at Great St Mary’s. This was a great challenge, he says, ‘but I enjoyed it, I built up the choirs, had a new organ, very supportive vicars, a lot of autonomy and a lot of fun! It became quite a centre for music and still is’. In 1998 Christopher moved to Sudbury while he was working as an examiner for the ABRSM, ‘because I fell in love with a beautiful old house which I had great fun restoring – architecture and old buildings are a passion’.

In 2004 he moved to South Africa to be Director of Music at the Cathedral of St Michael and St George, Grahamstown. He did a lot of work with big African choirs; ‘they learn everything by Tonic sol-fa but have amazing ambition, sang Schubert masses, Handel’s oratorios, the full traditional repertoire, as well as African music’. Christopher formed a choir of street children from a local shelter. ‘It was inspiring, a lot of them were orphans, some were HIV positive, some had been rescued from living in drains. They were so enthusiastic, they used to come and sing in the cathedral most weeks and would come running in, saying “Mr Chris, can we sing another song?” ’

Christopher returned to the UK in 2006 and was Director of Music at St Michael and All Angels, Croydon for eighteen months before resuming a freelance career. For thirty years he was an examiner for the ABRSM, examining in 28 countries. He holds the Fellowship diplomas of the Royal College of Organists and Trinity College of Music and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Diploma in Church Music. He has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Guild of Church Musicians.

Christopher was until recently conductor of the Bury St Edmunds Friendly Orchestra and the Tudor Rose Singers, and Choir Director at St Mary’s church. He is busy as a pianist, organist, harpsichordist, accompanist and teacher as well as pianist of the Sokolowski Trio and the Linnet Ensemble. ‘I play the piano now much more than the organ, I practise a lot because we play quite tricky music!’

His favourite composers? ‘Bach and Handel – I love Handel in particular. But also Elgar and Rachmaninov, Haydn, Mozart and Britten – I saw him conduct quite often as a boy’. We’re very much looking forward to Christopher accompanying our Brahms Requiem along with James Recknell at Saturday’s concert.

The concert is at the Apex concert hall, Charter Square, Bury St Edmunds on Saturday 16 November 2019, starting at 7.30pm. To get tickets, go to www.burybachchoir.co.uk, phone 01284 760101, or click here. Tickets are selling fast.