Bernard Hughes’ music has been commissioned by the BBC Singers, the New London Children’s Choir and the pianist Jakob Fichert. He has received performances at the Huddersfield, Spitalfields and Bangor New Music Festivals, and at venues including Coventry Cathedral and Snape Maltings. Bernard has recently been awarded a PhD in Composition from London University.

Recent projects include The Death of Balder, a major choral work for the BBC Singers on a Norse myth re-told by the distinguished novelist and scholar Kevin Crossley-Holland. The children’s opera Chincha-Chancha Cooroo was commissioned and premiered by W11 Opera in London. Bernard Hughes’ chamber opera Dumbfounded!, based on a short-story by the Edwardian writer Saki, was premiered at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival in London in August 2008.

Bernard Hughes’ music has been broadcast on Radio 3, and he appeared as a conductor on the recent Channel 4 series Howard Goodall’s Twentieth Century Greats. Bernard writes regularly in the new music periodical Tempo and contributes a regular column to New Notes, the magazine of Sound and Music (formerly SPNM).

Selected recent commissions and performances:

The Death of Balder
(BBC Singers, Radio 3, April 2008 and concert premiere, July 2009)

Dumbfounded!
(Tête à Tête Opera Festival, August 2008)

Chincha-Chancha Cooroo
(W11 Opera, December 2006 and New Cambridge Family Opera, March 2009)