Bernard Hughes’s music has been performed by ensembles including the BBC Singers and the London Mozart Players at major British venues including the Royal Albert Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral, and is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Since 2015 he has been Composer-in-Residence at St Paul’s Girls’ School, writing extensively for the school, including an opera, Ada. Bernard’s BBC commission Birdchant was premiered at the Proms in August 2021, the culmination of a long relationship with the BBC Singers, which also included a major portrait concert in January 2020 and an album of his choral music, I am the Song, released in 2016.

His orchestral works for family concerts, Bernard & Isabel and The Knight Who Took All Day, are frequently performed around Britain and were recorded by the Orchestra of the Swan on a release from February 2020. An album of choral music, Precious Things, sung by the Epiphoni Consort, was released in May 2022 and was described by Judith Weir as ‘choral music as we rarely hear it – generous, light-footed, surprising.’ Other releases include Bagatelles, an album of Bernard’s complete piano music. 

In 2024 the choral piece Hear My Heart Sing was premiered by the Bath choir Lucis, and it has gone on to receive a number of further performances, including by the National Youth Choir and Albany Pro Musica in 2025, and was shortlisted for the Ivors Classical Awards, Bernard’s third nomination.

Bernard Hughes lives in south-west London with his wife and two cats. He is a cricket fanatic and writer about music and books for the cultural website The Arts Desk – and has recently (and belatedly) started singing in a local choir.

www.bernardhughes.net