Luke Smith

Visiting Professor

In 1992, Luke got his first taste of mainstream sessioning in a 2 years stint with iconic pop/soul group,  Hot Chocolate as their main keyboard player.   When he returned to Manchester he realised it was time to leave and he moved to London to take the role as the Musical Director of the hit Broadway production of “Mama I Wanna Sing” with Chaka Khan.

In  2006 Luke began his long-standing role as keyboardist in George Michaels band. He was front and centre at Michaels “come back” world tour, the ‘25 Live’ tour which entertained over 650,000 ecstatic fans over the course of a 49 date tour in 11 different countries. This was followed by George Michael creating history as the first artist to play a concert at the then new Wembley Stadium on 9 June 2007

As a songwriter he co-wrote with the late Amy Winehouse on the Frank LP (“Take The Box” and “What it is About Men”), The Sugarbabes “One Foot In the One foot out” and Liberty X “Greed”. He has also written and produced advert and TV show theme tunes including for the hit show, “Sounds of Gospel” and most recently, the UK governments Modern Slavery -TV short film.

Luke cites as his most pivotal musical moment, his experience recording with BB King on “The Thrill Is Gone”.Sandwiched between uber legends, Eric Clapton & BB King, BB counted them into a song he had never heard. Luke says, “I had to call upon the old trick of “quickly finding the key when the congregation begins to sing and then just running the track”. He cooley performed for over 6 minutes with no sound, only to find out that the engineer had forgotten to turn up his monitors!