Biography

Ed Hughes’s work as a composer has become known in recent years following major commissions from the City of London Festival (an opera The Birds) and the Brighton Festival (including a new score to Sergei Eisenstein’s classic silent film Battleship Potemkin). These works have toured to the Salamanca Festival (2005) and to the Sydney Festival (2005) in the Sydney Opera House, where his collaboration with the distinguished Japanese textile artist Teruyoshi Yoshida was given six performances live by the Seymour Group. His 2001 score to Ivens’s Rain continues to be performed widely, most recently by the Israel Contemporary Players in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in May 2007, where it was broadcast on Israeli network radio.

His collaboration with Yoshida (Memory of Colour) was nominated for a British Academy Composers’ Award. His work for the Opera Group The Birds was awarded the Gresham College Prize and was profiled live on BBC Radio 3 with extracts performed by the cast.

He was commissioned by Glyndebourne Opera and Photoworks to write a new orchestral score to the Sophy Rickett film (commissioned simultaneously) about Glyndebourne entitled 'AUDITORIUM'. The joint work premiered live at Glyndebourne on 17 November 2007 and was installed at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, prior to an international tour. This major collaboration will be the subject of a book to be published by Photoworks in 2008. 'Auditorium' was shown at Tate Modern on 7 March 2008 and will be shown in Ffotogallery, Cardiff and at the Palazzo Santa Margherita in Modena, Italy in spring and summer 2008, followed by further installations in Turin and Tokyo in autumn 2008.

He has also had performances at a national level including Oxford Playhouse, Cheltenham Festival, Buxton Opera House, South Bank Centre in London, and many of his works have been recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Most recently 'Strike Sketches' was broadcast on Hear and Now in May 2008.

In 2006 he was awarded a grant by the Arts Council England to write a score for the silent film Strike, also by Eisenstein. This work was completed in 2007 and premiered at the Barbican in July. It toured the UK in 2007 and was released by Tartan Video in a box-set of Eisenstein’s early films, also including Battleship Potemkin. The Israel Contemporary Players gave two live performances of Battleship Potemkin in Tel Aviv in May 2008.

He has been commissioned by the Tacet Ensemble to write a work for them and the folk duo Spiers and Boden. The work will be premiered in November 2008, followed by a UK tour.

Ed Hughes lives in Lewes and lectures in Music at the University of Sussex. He is represented by the University of York Music Press and the British Music Information Centre.