Ed Hughes

Biography

Born in England in 1968 Ed Hughes studied music at the Universities of Cambridge and Southampton. Works recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 include an orchestral piece, Crimson Flames, chamber works such as Aureola, Lanterns, Media Vita, vocal ensemble works and song cycles. Early commissions came from the London Sinfonietta, Opus 20, Sinfonia 21 and I Fagiolini.

Ed Hughes has also written several works for his own ensemble the New Music Players, including Sextet for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, premiered at Dartington in 1999.

Ed Hughes has worked with schools and in higher education. He was a PRS Composer In Education with Wingfield Arts in 1999. His work for the Schubert Ensemble's Chamber Music 2000 project has been performed by various young ensembles and was released on NMC. He has recently contributed to UYMP's new volume of ensemble music for young performers. He currently lectures in the Music Department at Sussex University.

In 2001 Hughes wrote a new score for the silent film Rain (1929) by Joris Ivens, commissioned by the Bath International Music Festival. A recording has been released on Unknown Public's Critical Notice CD. Also in 2001, he wrote The Sibyl of Cumae, to words by poet and ethnologist Tom Lowenstein, for mezzo soprano and ensemble, commissioned by the Brighton Festival. A recording is available on the London Independent Records label.

Works in recent years have reflected a developing interest in musical responses to film and visual art, and have toured across the UK and to Spain and Australia.

"Because I am interested in polyphonic music, I find that it is very important to achieve an audible rhythmic complexity, which may be a reason why I favour seemingly transparent harmonic structures.

"Two objectives seem to me important in contemporary art: to awaken the listener to spiritual consciousness; and to respond to a culture in which the condition of numbness and the routine acceptance of a thoughtless mass entertainment are prevalent. In music, one can play upon the action of memory and work with the sense of time passing. These are powerful ways of awakening the listener, and of making him or her 'susceptible to divine influences', as John Cage once wrote. Exploring such issues has prompted me recently to work on a relatively large scale. Larger scale forms have enabled me to experiment with periodicity in music; with repetition; symmetries; and journeys through varying tonal landscapes; with change and transfiguration, including crossing borders between acoustic and electronic sound.

"My music can be contemplative, but is not mindless. Colour in my language is a way of speaking figuratively of timbre, instrumental line, mixing, articulation and multiple forms of tone production, and of shimmering tonal centres. The more one experiences this music, the more its vibrancy is apparent through its focus on an evolving polyphony - an aesthetic that is quite different from minimalism."

"I am influenced by those composers of the late medieval and early renaissance period who in their music created harmonies of great intensity, shot through with lines of energy and abandon. I connect harmony in music with the spiritual aura created by colour in painting (eg. certain works of Mark Rothko). I do not regard the process of composing as a romantic exercise, however. Most of my works have a rigorous rhythmic structure. I am interested in the way in which lines gather their own momentum and energy, seeming to flow over and break through the predetermined boundaries of the composition."

Ed Hughes

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