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Composer, Music Theory Professor, and Traditional Irish Fiddler in Cleveland Ohio. Thank you for stopping by my page and looking around.

New Recording: My orchestral piece, Three Ways of Getting There, was performed at Carnegie Hall in November 2023 by the American Composers Orchestra.

The piece received the following review by Seth Colter Walls in the New York Times: “Discussions of tonal contemporary music sometime fall into the cliché of calling any such works “lushly” melodic. So give Hughes credit: His motivic sense in “Three Ways of Getting There” on Thursday was robust and convincing. And yet his accompanying orchestration didn’t operate with any boring received wisdom. In the first movement, as an undulating-then-rising melodic figure was passed among the strings, there was also tartness that offered a clever way of scrambling expected codes for conventional melody. (Tuneful and finely textured, “Three Ways” makes you wonder what Hughes would do with an opera commission.)”

Thursday nights at 7pm I can be found playing at the Plank Road Tavern‘s Traditional Irish Session in Lakewood, OH . (Located at 16719 Detroit Avenue)

I teach a group fiddle class on Mondays at 7:15pm at Gormley’s Pub in Rocky River, OH. (Located at 19500 Center Ridge Road). Tunes to follow the class–all are welcome. Please contact me for more information.