
Hugh Millington
Hugh Millington is a classical guitarist who works extensively in the areas of new music performance, community and outreach work, and performance research. Regarding the latter he is particularly focussed on the guitar in the nineteenth century, and he regularly performs on a number of original instruments from this period.
Hugh has given a number of lecture recitals on nineteenth century guitar music, notably to an audience of over 500 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel as part of the Orit Wolf Concert Lecture Series (2018); at the Royal Academy of Music Museum for the exhibition of the Robert Spencer Collection (2018); and at research conferences including a talk on the music of Cyril Scott at the plenary conference for the Society for Musicology in Ireland (2021).
He regularly performs in the Miyabi Duo with guitarist Saki Kato, and together they have collaborated with many composers on new and existing pieces. These composers include Judith Bingham; Timothy Bowers; Edward Cowie; Sylvia Lim, whose piece they premiered at the Wigmore Hall in June 2021; and Mihailo Trandafilovski, whose piece they will premiere at their informal Wigmore Hall Bechstein Session in 2022. In 2021 he recorded works with both the Miyabi Duo and the Spectrum Guitar Quartet for an upcoming album called Streams and Particles, which will be released by Métier, showcasing the guitar music of Edward Cowie. In 2022 the Miyabi Duo will record for an album of duos by Mihailo Trandafilovski.
Regularly editing music, Hugh has been the sole editor of several of the publications of Timothy Bowers’s music, including his Five Interludes for guitar, published by Queens Temple Publications in 2019. In addition to this, Hugh worked as an advisor to musician and renowned educator Paul Harris, advising and assisting with the editing of the two volume Improve your Sight Reading! series for guitar (published by Faber Music, 2019).
As part of the Miyabi Duo, he also works extensively within community music-making contexts, with participants ranging in age from babies under 1 year old to elderly people living with dementia. The Duo works regularly with Wigmore Hall Learning, following from their Wigmore Hall Learning/Open Academy Ensemble Fellowship, awarded in 2020. They have played in the For Crying Out Loud series at the Wigmore Hall, in addition to many other events, including Wigmore’s award-winning Chamber Tots at Home series (Fantastic for Families Awards 2021).
Hugh graduated from the University of Cambridge with the degree of Master of Philosophy in Musicology (2020). During his time there, he was awarded the prestigious Waldmann Music Award at Sidney Sussex College, of which he is a member. He previously studied with a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, where he graduated with first class honours, having been awarded the John McAslan Prize and the Timothy Gilson Guitar Prize. In 2020 he was awarded the LRAM diploma.