Zoë Moskal
Early Life
Zoë Moskal started life in vibrant, multicultural down-town London; then from the age of five continued her growing up on a quiet, if blustery coastline in the East of Scotland. Now both of these colour her song-writing. From birth she has had to live with impaired vision, although meeting her, you wouldn’t necessarily realise that–– many people just think she’s a little dreamy!
From the age of about nine she has been singing solo to numerous and varied audiences big and small around the Lothians and Edinburgh; pop, classical, cabaret and folk (with Steven Polwart and the late Jim Reid), jazz (with Martin Kemp) and even with overtone singer Peter Govan. She cultivated her variety of styles in her early teens partly in response to requests from local clubs for solo shows of up to half an hour, to meet the diverse tastes of the captive audiences.
Zoë also sang two consecutive years in the National Girls’ Choir of Scotland and took on leading roles in school productions of musicals (including Les Misérables and Fiddler On The Roof) from age 12 onwards.
Holyrood and Join The Dots
In the summer holidays of 2009, after performing at a conference in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, Zoë joined forces with two other acts from that event, Sally Clay and Amy Moar, creating Join the Dots, an album of original songs and instrumental compositions, which made £3000 for the RNIB charity.
Year of the Homecoming and Love Burns
The 2009 Year of the Homecoming in Scotland saw Zoë share the stage with Phil Cunningham, Dougie MacLean and Karen Matheson. Over her last couple of years at school she and the musically gifted classical guitarist Alan Coady had provided a “rapid response” service, fulfilling requests for Burns songs at suppers and conferences on behalf of the school. Shortly before the Official Closing Ceremony Alan contacted the organisers, but the line-up was full, the programmes already printed. However, when Alan at last persuaded them to at least listen to her voice, they insisted she was a must for the programme. She and Alan were fast-tracked in, performing for the crowd of 800 and receiving an unexpected fan-letter from First Minister Alex Salmond. A couple of years later, Zoe and Alan decided to record the Burns songs that they had honed over the years, filling out the repertoire with some complementary numbers to produce the album Love Burns.
Writing and Recent Studies
Meanwhile Zoë continued writing her own songs, more and more addictively until in her final school year she found she was rushing home to sit down at the piano and compose. She decided at the last moment to change course from languages and follow her passion for music. She hoped to do this at a university, but having next to no formal training in theory or any musical instrument, she embarked on an HNC at the Academy of Music and Sound, in Edinburgh’s “Auld Toun”, with vocal performance as her principal study. During this time she refined her skills in both popular and classical singing, passing her grade 8 in Voice with distinction. From there she was accepted for Edinburgh Napier University’s Popular Music Honours course, setting performance aside for the time being to study composition and learn more about arrangement.
She is now poised to bring together again both her talents and start performing again.
