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Should you have trouble concentrating, newly minted federal Heritage Minister and iPod junkie James Moore has just the prescription for you: baroque music.

The 32-year-old British Columbia MP - who's just made history in becoming Canada's youngest-ever federal cabinet minister - describes this era of music as though it were vitamins for the mind.

"I can't sit down and read for more than half an hour unless I am listening to baroque music," says Moore when pressed for examples of what sorts of culture Canada's latest arts minister likes to consume.

"Baroque's best for listening to when you study because it's layered music; it's intense; it's all about rhythms. You'll have a percussion section going and you'll have a string section ... and so what it does is it actually gets your brain going and thinking in ways that promote rhythm," he says.

"When you have rhythm - that's what you're looking for when you're studying."

Moore will likely require lots of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi in the days ahead.

He's got a big set of briefing books to absorb after taking over a file where policy missteps taken before the recent election was called resurfaced during the campaign to hurt Conservatives. Relatively minor cuts to arts programs - designed to play well with the party's red-meat conservative base - ended up damaging Tory electoral fortunes in vote-rich Quebec.

But Moore is unapologetic about the nearly $45-million in cuts, including PromArt funding for artists touring abroad, saying these were sound decisions in the name of fiscal responsibility that rival parties misrepresented. (All the money was redirected into other programs under Heritage's mandate, Tories are quick to note.) His predecessor, Josée Verner, told The Globe and Mail in August that she was working hard to find replacements for PromArt and Trade Routes, two of the programs eliminated. But Moore declined to say whether he would proceed to do that.

"I am not going to make any commitments at this time."

But while he defended the cuts, Moore left the door open to new initiatives.

"Those decisions that were made in the past are not going to change in terms of the funding side, but there's always opportunities in the future to work with these groups and work with arts and culture communities to ensure that we all go forward together."

Quick on his feet, with four years experience in broadcasting as a talk-radio commentator, Moore was first elected as an MP in 2000. He's taken on increasingly significant roles for the Tories since they took power and last June was promoted to minister of state - a post outside cabinet - responsible for official languages.

The Harper Conservatives like Moore because he's careful with his words, hard-working and utterly dedicated to the party's cause. This ambitious MP is also what amounts to a professional politician, having won his seat in the Commons a mere six years after graduating from high school.

One of Moore's most important duties for the Harper government in recent months was his able service as senior flak catcher. He deftly shielded Prime Minister Stephen Harper from political controversy surrounding an alleged financial offer to dying B.C. MP Chuck Cadman - fielding the bulk of the questions on the matter in the Commons.

The youngest of three children, Moore was born in the Vancouver-area city of New Westminster, B.C. and raised in neighbouring Coquitlam. Unusual for a British Columbian, he was schooled entirely in French immersion through Grades 1 to 12, an experience he thoroughly endorses with a grudging nod to Liberal bilingualism policies.

"I don't know if it was [my parents] sort of accepting the Trudeau sales pitch about the importance of having two official languages and investing yourself in them, but I think it was certainly part of it."

More libertarian than conservative, Moore set himself apart from many Tory colleagues three years ago when he voted in favour of legalizing same-sex marriage. He's also a decade or more younger than many fellow cabinet ministers, a difference reflected in the playlist of his ever-present 160-gigabyte iPod, which is packed with everything from Sum 41 to Public Enemy to Barenaked Ladies. "The arrest [of Ladies front man Steven Page] didn't change the fact they're a great band," he says.

Moore's communication skills - demonstrably superior to his Tory predecessors at Canadian Heritage - appear to be an important part of the reason he was moved to Heritage.

He says the problem with the arts-funding controversy is the Conservatives were unable to explain themselves over the din of the election campaign. Rectifying this will now be a chief concern of his. "I am going to be out there every day that I can reminding Canadians that the government of Stephen Harper is the government that always has, and will continue to, stand up for Canadian culture, arts and heritage," says Moore, who offers the statistic that overall cultural spending by the Harper government is up close to 8 per cent this year from the last year the former Liberal government ran Ottawa.

He said he's keen to meet with "any and all" arts groups who have suggestions for him and wants to move beyond recent conflicts between the Tories and cultural communities. "This is not about debating the past; this is about where we want to go in the future."

He said while he has no background in the arts, he's a "fan" of artists and "supporter and a believer in the government's role to partner in and ensuring that Canadian arts and culture has a federal government that's supporting it in meaningful ways."

Moore holds up the recently released Canadian war film Passchendaele as an example of successful state-funded art. "These are the kinds of things we ought to be doing and the kind of things we ought to support," he said of the ambitious production, which has received mixed reviews across North America.

He says it's unfair to criticize the Tories for taking more than $40-million in savings from arts-programs cuts such as foreign touring funding and redirecting some of it to the Olympic torch relay. "The torch relay will highlight arts and culture ... It's one thing to say we're going to help finance a handful of artists to travel around the world and go to specific venues and present their talents. It's quite another thing when we have the opportunity in 18 months time when we're hosting the world to have the eyes of over three billion people around the planet looking [at] Canada."