'I'm a musician working with people with dementia - I see non-verbal people suddenly sing songs from their youth'

If you’re looking for a musician, he’s almost certainly your man as he plays accordion, piano, organ, guitar, recorder, tenor horn and French horn. Then there’s the thing on his CV that people find most intriguing - the ancient Australian wind instrument the didgeridoo.

“People really are much more impressed by that than anything else I do,” laughs the talented Sheffielder. “A large part of the skill is about circular breathing - breathing in and out at the same time.”

A classically-trained musician – he was an organ scholar at Oxford University - and a popular folk musician, Luke is also a composer and arranger. His work includes commissions for BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Cultural Olympiad and for festivals and concerts up and down the UK.

He has co-curated the Sage Gateshead’s first Words and Music festival with Bard of Barnsley poet Ian McMillan and je was also the main writer for The Ian McMillan Orchestra, as well as writing for The Devil’s Violin group - with his regular performing partner Oliver Wilson-Dickson - and composing for the celebrated Black Dyke Brass Band, Tredegar Town Band and Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

One of Luke’s greatest passion, however, is music in the community. He works extensively in arts-and-health and community settings, including with South Yorkshire-founded national charity Lost Chord UK, which works to improve mental health, wellbeing and quality of life for people living with dementia and other neurological conditions.

The charity focuses on the transformative and therapeutic power of interactive music sessions, which are led by professional musicians, supported by volunteers, in community and care home settings.

Luke has been playing for Lost Chord since 1999, making him officially the charity’s longest serving musician.

Remembering how he got involved, he says: “I’d only recently come out of a performance and communications skills course at the Guildhall in London and was living in Cardiff, working in the community and arts when I auditioned to be part of Live Music Now, the organisation that trains musicians in community work.

"They were looking for musicians under 30 to go and work in schools and hospitals and care homes and it was through a Live Music Now partnership that I became involved with Lost Chord UK.”

The link with the charity became even greater when Luke and his partner Simone relocated to Sheffield and he became a regular player for the charity.

“Lost Chord UK gave lots of musicians lots of chances to play and it is always a great experience seeing the impact that music can have,” he says.

“Working with Lost Chord UK, I think you are there to bring some degree of happiness to the people who are there with you...I always feel happy when I am playing and even if just one person connects with you during a session, it makes me feel that what I’ve done is worthwhile.”

In the beginning, performances mainly took place in care home settings but as the charity has grown, so has its approach to sharing its music.

As well as going into care homes and hospices, the charity now also brings live interactive music to people in community spaces with tea and tunes and community choir sessions around Yorkshire and further afield.

Its musicians also provide highly personal one-to-one bedside live music when someone is too ill to join in a session or is approaching the end of life. And now, for the first time, Lost Chord is taking live music into private homes with its Music Made Personal pilot scheme.

When Luke first started playing for Lost Chord sessions, the programme would mainly be made up of folk tunes but the repertoire has expanded over the decades.

“You realise gradually step by step what the golden nuggets are, the pieces that get people singing along, the songs that they knew from their teenage years or have been important to them,” he explains.

More than 20 years ago, the audience might have enjoyed the memory of Dame Vera Lynn - for many years Lost Chord UK’s patron - and the sounds of the war years but time moves on and If that means performing a version of the Human League’s Don’t You Want Me, then Luke is happy to oblige.

“Of course you have to move with the years and the material you are performing has to change,” he says. “It’s good to have those vintage numbers to hand because every now and again they do get requested, those golden numbers that stand the test of time.”

Even after so many years with the charity, Luke remains fascinated by the ways that music can reach out to people who might perhaps have lost all other means of communication.

“In some way, music and the words connected with a song are somehow lodged in people’s brains in a way that is different to normal everyday language,” he says.

“People can still access lyrics to songs and melodies and you will see people who are mainly non-verbal singing complete songs if they knew them in their youth.

"Sometimes you will be with a family member and you will see tears when they see somebody they love singing when they haven’t spoken for many months. It proves again and again that music connects with human beings in a way that is very tangible and very real.”

To find out more about the work of Lost Chord UK, visit lost-chord.org.uk