Raymond Hughes (* November 12, 1952 in Thomasville, Georgia) is an American conductor and choral director.
Biography
Family
Raymond Hughes was born into a musical family of significant German heritage in the southwest Georgia town of Thomasville. His great-great grandfather, John Peter (Johannes Petrus) Arnold (1823–1893) emigrated from Boppard, Germany, in 1840 and founded Arnold Brick Yard, which provided building materials for many of Thomasville's eminent residences and commercial buildings until 1973. He is the elder son of jazz musician and businessman Samuel Osco Hughes (1922–2002) and the pianist and teacher Doris Sutton Hughes (1919–2006). As his father was one of the founding members of the Thomasville Entertainment Foundation, the local concert series, he grew up in a lively musical environment. He and the conductor William Fred Scott were close childhood friends. Scott's piano teacher was Hughes’ mother.
Education
During his time at Thomasville High School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society, he was Drum Major of the Thomasville High School Band and began playing the organ at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church when he was 15, and subsequently at First Baptist and First United Methodist Churches. After graduating with honors in Liberal Arts (English, Political Science, and Music) at the University of Georgia in 1974, at which time he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society, he received an Assistantship at the University of South Carolina, apprenticed to the Hungarian conductor Arpad Darazs as Assistant Conductor of the University of South Carolina Concert Choir. While a graduate student at USC, he also worked as Music Director and Organist at Main Street United Methodist Church in Columbia. In the summer of 1976, the USC Concert Choir took First Prizes in all categories at the Béla Bartók Choral Competition in Debrecen, Hungary. He also studied conducting at Indiana University in 1975 and at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado in 1976. He received a diploma in Russian from the Gorniy Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1997, and studied Japanese at The New School in New York City in 2000 and 2001.
Professional
In 1977, he was contracted as Coach and Assistant Conductor at the Pfalztheater in Kaiserslautern, Germany, where he made his conducting debut with the Tankred Dorst's and Peter Zadek's cabaret/review Kleiner Mann – Was nun?. In the 1979/1980 season, he joined the music staff of the Nuremberg Opera, and from 1980 to 1984 he worked at the Staatstheater Mainz. From 1982 to 1984, he also worked as Organist/Music Director at Hainerberg Chapel in Wiesbaden, where he also founded and conducted the Wiesbaden German-American Community Chorus in many concerts with orchestra.
In 1984, after seven years in Germany, he accepted an appointment as Resident Associate Conductor at the State Theatre in Pretoria, South Africa, where he made his opera conducting debut when he jumped in to replace italian maestro Anton Guadagno in Johannesburg performances of Manon Lescaut in 1985. From 1986 to 1991, he worked as Conductor and Chorus Master at the Cape Town Opera, making his conducting debut with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro on February 15, 1986. During this time, he was also Music Director of the Philharmonia Choir of Cape Town, one of the oldest choral societies in the Southern Hemisphere, conducting Philharmonia's concerts with orchestra in Cape Town City Hall, including annual Easter performances of Handel's Messiah, Haydn's The Creation, Mendelssohn's Elijah, and Handel's Judas Maccabaeus for Hanukkah and the international premiere of Martin Kalmanoff's The Joy of Prayer, both in 1989.
In the summer seasons of 1986 and 1987, he guested as Opera Conductor at the Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina, and in 1989 and 1990, also worked as Music Director of the Opera School at the University of Cape Town.
During the 1990/1991 season, he commuted between Cape Town and Rome, Italy, where he worked at the invitation of Norbert Balatsch as conductor of the Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, while continuing his commitment to the Cape Town Opera. In addition to preparing the Santa Cecilia chorus for numerous major works with the Santa Cecilia orchestra, he conducted performances of Carmina Burana at Villa Giulia in the summer of 1991.