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.

Recent projects include a major new work for the BBC Singers – The Death of Balder – and a children’s opera for the London-based W11 Opera. Bernard Hughes’ new opera Dumbfounded! will be premiered at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival on the 8 and 9 of August at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. The opera, another collaboration with librettist William Radice, is an adaptation of a short story by the Edwardian writer Saki.

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 the SPNM magazine. He also writes a regular column for New Notes, the magazine of the Society for the Promotion of New Music.

Selected recent commissions and performances:

The Death of Balder
(BBC Singers, Spitalfields Festival 2006 and Radio 3, April 2008)

Chincha-Chancha Cooroo
(W11 Opera, December 2006)

Strettos and Striations
(Jakob Fichert, The Warehouse, London, November 2007)

One-and-a-Half Truths
(BBC Singers, Huddersfield Festival 2003, and Radio 3)

Missa Sancti Michaelis
(Coventry Cathedral 2006 – commissioned by the Bedford Park Festival 2004)

Canite Tuba in Sion
(Cavendish Singers, Westminster Cathedral)