Hugill, Robert 03/07/1955

Robert Hugill is a London-based composer, journalist, blogger and lecturer. Robert runs the highly regarded classical music blog, Planet Hugill (http://www.planethugill.com/), lectures on opera and musical topics, and gives pre-concert talks at Conway Hall, where he also writes the programme notes.

Robert’s fourth opera The Gardeners premiered at Conway Hall in June 2019, conducted by William Vann. Inspired by a newspaper article, the opera (libretto by Joanna Wyld) is set amongst the gardeners in a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery.
• ‘Hugill’s music has a moving serenity and stillness’ - Opera Magazine
• ‘Overall, there is a formality, of a ritual and spiritual kind, that this opera observes consistently and with considerable impact.’ – OperaToday.com

In 2018, a disc of Robert’s songs Quickening: songs to texts by English and Welsh poets was issued on the Navona Records label, with Anna Huntley (mezzo-soprano), Johnny Wilkinson (baritone), Rosalind Ventris (viola) and William Vann (piano) performing settings of poetry by Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury), A.E. Housman, Christina Rosetti and Ivor Gurney.

Robert’s setting of the Advent Prose was premiered by Alistair Dixon and Chapelle du Roi at St John’s Smith Square in December 2014, and they premiered Robert’s setting of Ruth Padel’s Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth in 2015. London Concord Singers, conductor Jessica Norton, premiered a piece specially written for them in December 2016 as part of the choir’s 50th-anniversary celebrations.

Robert's cantata The Testament of Dr Cranmer was issued on the Divine Art label in 2008. His opera When a man knows was staged in 2011 at the Bridewell Theatre, London and his opera The Genesis of Frankenstein was premiered by the Helios Collective in London in 2016. Robert has recently completed Tempus per Annum, a cycle of 70 motets for the church’s year with over 45 hours of music, and has released all of the motets for free download on the CPDL website. Robert’s songs were placed in the English Poetry and Song Society’s A E Housman Competition, Ivor Gurney Competition and Diamond Songs Competition.