Hugh Morris

Durham, London, Manchester

Writer, Culture Journalist and Critic at Freelance

Journalist at VAN Magazine

@vanmusicmag editor and writer elsewhere. Loves a typo / views: model's own. [email protected]

Articles

Gagged!

2 weeks ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

Contracts seen by VAN show that the management of Northern Ballet has inserted a confidentiality clause into the agreements for its freelance musicians. To continue reading, subscribe now. Unlimited access to ourweekly issues and archives.
Kings Place faces backlash over Lockheed Martin links • VAN Magazine

3 weeks ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

On May 26, Art Not Arms posted an open letter to Kings Place, the London classical music venue and conference center, that called for the cancellation of the upcoming Defence in Space Conference in October. This conference is sponsored by arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The open letter noted that Lockheed Martin is involved in the production of F-35 fighter jets currently being used by the Israeli military in Gaza.
The Wire Issue 497

3 weeks ago | thewire.co.uk | James Hadfield |Matt Krefting |Abi Bliss |Hugh Morris

July 2025 Subscribers: read this issue online. Subscribe to the magazine. Buy issue 497. Inside our brand new issue: Haruomi Hosono: The exotica explorer and YMO founder has found his voice in a late career renaissance. By James Hadfield.Plus: Japanese exotica: A user’s guide by David Toop Bromp Treb: Film maker and musician Neil ‘Cloaca’ Young has learned from the possibility of failure.
Kazuki Yamada on Birmingham, Berlin, and bins • VAN Magazine

1 month ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

Phoning in from Frankfurt—he’s there getting a visa ahead of his conducting debut at La Scala—Kazuki Yamada radiates positivity down the Zoom call. An extremely popular conductor in Birmingham, where he is currently City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s music director and artistic advisor, it was recently announced that Yamada would succeed Robin Ticciati as the Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, beginning in 2026.
The gradual unfoldings of Catherine Lamb • VAN Magazine

1 month ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

Both Catherine Lamb and I arrive for our interview in a west Berlin park slightly distracted, and the universe works to make us more so. First, a bird in a bush behind our bench insists on everyone hearing its loud, virtuosic song; we swiftly relocate to the grass in the middle of the square. Then, a man approaches us asking for water for his dogs; we give it to him, he leaves, and we try to carry on where we left off.
Komische Oper's "Don Giovanni," reviewed in the bar • VAN Magazine

1 month ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris |Jeffrey Arlo Brown

On Sunday, a new “Don Giovanni,” the final staging of Kirill Serebrennikov’s Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, premiered at the Komische Oper in Berlin. It imagined the title character as being taken through the bardo throughout the opera, following the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and substituted movements from Mozart’s Requiem for the work’s usual finale. After the four-hour performance, VAN editors Hugh Morris and Jeffrey Arlo Brown convened for white wine in Kreuzberg to discuss the production.
Against The Grain: Hugh Morris has had enough 'jazzy'

2 months ago | thewire.co.uk | Hugh Morris

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Festen was too big to fail, and in many ways it didn’t. A luxury cast with considerable strength in depth excelled through 90 minutes of relentlessly bleak action. That a brand new opera felt the right length for its subject – and could have even been slightly longer – was a rarer thing still. There was even a laugh out loud moment, as tenor Allan Clayton burst through a door, Big Bird style. If only the music had been better.
These Top Republican Donors Also Donate To Classical Music • VAN Magazine

2 months ago | van-magazine.com | Jeffrey Arlo Brown |Hugh Morris

In May 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, many American classical music institutions joined what appeared to be a society-wide reckoning on racism. The Minnesota Orchestra commissioned a work in Floyd’s memory, by composer Carlos Simon and librettist Marc Bamuthi, called “brea(d)th.” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra shared sobering statistics on representation of Black and Latino musicians in orchestras.
Radio 3's "20th Century Radicals" wrangles with recent history • VAN Magazine

2 months ago | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

Beginning with Stockhausen on April 6, “20th Century Radicals” is a new 40-part series about the composers who shaped the previous century. Over the course of 40 weekly episodes, it covers Andriessen and Berio through to Xenakis and La Monte Young, via El-Dabh, Jolas, Murail and Takahashi, and many more. It’s the sort of series I really hope becomes appointment radio.
Why hasn't the Musicians' Union been on strike since 1980? • VAN Magazine

Mar 20, 2025 | van-magazine.com | Hugh Morris

The UK-based Musicians’ Union has 36,000 members, and covers musicians across a huge variety of genres, vocations and working patterns. Its orchestral section—about 10% of the membership—represents the best organized part of the union.