Bio

Posed photo of Hugh Morris next to a wall. Photo taken by Robin Christian

I’m a freelance writer, editor, copywriter and musician. I grew up in County Durham, before moving to Manchester in 2016. I now live in South London.

I mostly write about music and culture. My work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New YorkerPitchfork, The Face, Private Eye, Jazzwise, Bandcamp Daily, Tribune, The Financial Times and VAN Magazine. I mainly focus on features, interviews, and investigations. I’ve been an editor at VAN since 2023.

I particularly enjoy interviewing musicians about their work. To date, I’ve interviewed Thomas Ádes, Marshall Allen, Joan Armatrading, Nicola Benedetti, Lakecia Benjamin, George Benjamin, Blackhaine, corto.alto, Victoria Canal, Nubya Garcia, Tigran Hamasyan, Danny L Harle, Stephen Hough, Shabaka Hutchings, Vijay Iyer, Steve Jones, Alexandre Kantorow, Catherine Lamb, Michael League, Stewart Lee, Oliver Leith, Elaine Mitchener, Vasily Petrenko, Caroline Polachek, Natalya Romaniw, Rebecca Saunders, Maria Schneider, Éliane Radigue, and Immanuel Wilkins.

Alongside journalism work, I’ve been part of Manchester Collective for the past few seasons, writing online guides to their programmes. Other copywriting clients include 12 Ensemble, Apple Music, BBC Philharmonic, Brownswood, Delphian, Music in the Round, NMC, Pentatone, Platoon, Royal Academy of Music, Signum, Scottish Ensemble, Warner Classics, Whirlwind Recordings and Wigmore Hall.

Outside of writing, I try to make as much music as I can. I sing, conduct, improvise, and play the trombone. I graduated from the University of Manchester with First Class (Hons) in Music in July 2019, receiving the Hargreaves Prize for Aesthetics.