David Hughes is Director of Music at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Littleton, Colorado, where he oversees an active program of musical formation for students and adults, in the context of the traditional Latin Mass and the Divine Office. He is also director of Gaudium Verum, a professional liturgical choir in Denver. Hughes is a composer, conductor, and organist who is in international demand as a recitalist and instructor of Gregorian chant. He has developed choral programs at several notable parishes in Connecticut, including St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk and most recently St. Patrick Oratory in Waterbury. He is the founder of Viri Galilæi, an ensemble of men from the tristate New York area who have gathered every week for the past ten years to sing Vespers and medieval polyphony from facsimiles of original manuscripts.

A board member of the Church Music Association of America, Hughes serves on the faculty of its annual Sacred Music Colloquium, teaching chant, composition, and organ improvisation. He is Director of Music for the Roman Forum’s annual two-week Summer Symposium at Lake Garda in Italy, where he directs a choir for daily Masses and Vespers, and coordinates performances with local groups; he is also a board Member of the Roman Forum. He was named Chant Instructor for St. Benedict’s Abbey in Still River, Massachusetts, which he visits every few months for musical consultation with the monks. He travels frequently to give workshops, clinics, and recitals in North America, South America, and Europe.

Hughes has written extensively for choir and organ. Recent compositions include the Misa en honor de Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso for congregation and organ, which was a commission from the CMAA; Cor Jesu amantissimum for double choir; and Iste confessor in honorem Sancti Ignatii. His suite for organ, Nuestra Señora de Apocalipsis, received its premiere in Guayaquil, Ecuador in August 2019. Film scoring credits include Navis Pictures’ St. Bernadette of Lourdes and several documentaries. With librettist Richard Munkelt, Hughes is the composer of the opera Gracchus; the fully staged world premiere was in Stamford, Connecticut in August 2023.

Hughes’s composition teachers have included Ruth Schonthal and John Halle, and he has studied organ with Paul Jacobs, Daniel Sullivan, and Scott Turkington. He is a graduate of Yale College.