Robert Grove Hughes

AboutCompositionsDiscographyResume
Contact Info
1420 45th Street, #16
Emeryville, CA
94608
antiphon.silenus@sbcglobal.net

Bob now devotes his time to composing Silenus' Antiphonary after a full career as composer, conductor, bassoonist and champion of new music, with special emphases on American, Japanese and Italian new music. As co-founder of the Cabrillo Music Festival with Lou Harrison, conductor of the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music, founder-director of the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra and composer-conductor of many other music special concerts, music film and video projects, he developed programs that included ground-breaking commissions, recordings and tours.

[Many members of the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra went on to pursue careers in music. If you are a former member of the OSYO, please send Bob any unique memories of your time with the orchestra and he will include it here. Please use this email: mafishco@gmail.co]

Biography:

ROBERT GROVE HUGHES, composer and scholar, is currently composing “Silenus’ Antiphonary,” a long-term project, somewhat like a “book” of days, that joins graphics and texts with music. He has recently co-edited with Margaret Fisher The Complete Music of Ezra Pound in five volumes, published by Second Evening Art. A graduate of the University of Buffalo, he studied composition with Aaron Copland, Carlos Chavez (in Buffalo NY), Luigi Dallapiccola (in Florence, Italy), and Lou Harrison (in Aptos, CA). He has received commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo College, the Oakland Symphony, the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music, Houghton-Mifflin, the National Parks Service, and the Walt Disney Company, among others. His compositions include works for chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, chorus, performance art events and a wide variety of media, including eighteen movie scores and a large body of electronic music.

Bob directed orchestras in the United States and Europe, with a concentration on contemporary music. Just before retiring, he led the Lyons Opera Ballet in a series of works by Frank Zappa. As conductor, he has commissioned premieres from Laurie Anderson, Don Buchla, Olly Wilson, Robert Ashley, Robert Moran, Ned Rorem, among others, and has issued recordings of music by Lou Harrison, Henry Brant, Luigi Dallapiccola, Ned Rorem, Henry Grant Still and Peter Lopez on CRI, New World, Music Masters, Phoenix, Fantasy, Cambridge, Desto, 1750 Arch and Bomar labels. He recorded the opera “Le Testament” by Ezra Pound on the Fantasy label, with the San Francisco Opera Western Opera Theater in 1972, reissued on the Second Evening Art label and excerpted on the Other Minds label.

Bob’s composition and performance art activities received support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Bellagio Study Center (Italy), the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Exploratorium (San Francisco), the Djerassi Foundation and The Lake Placid Center for the Arts. He has been a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome. In 2004 he was elected to the Music Hall of Fame in Buffalo, New York.

Current Work: 

Silenus' Antiphonary

Recently published by Second Evening Art

Sop'o muerte se cande . . . (for tenor and small orchestra, 1983, rev. 2013)

Whistling Tune (for wind quintet)

 

The Basics (see resume for a more complete list)

From:      Buffalo, NY (b. 1933)

                 Joined Buffalo Musicians Union Local 92 during college years.

                 Inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 2004.

Current:  Composer; Publisher, Second Evening Art Publishing / BMI

Affiliations: Musicians Union Local 6 (since 1962), Carl Fischer Music Publishers, Second Evening Art Publishing, and BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.)

Compositions: c.140 works for orchestra, solo and chamber ensembles, voice and chorus, electronic tape, ballet, film scores and video.

Recent Activities

  2003-2011 Co-author and editor, with Margaret Fisher, researching, writing, publishing in 5 scholarly volumes the complete music composed by the American poet Ezra Pound (www.ezrapoundmusic.com)