[7][8][9] In subsequent decades he co-founded and led the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music with baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner and co-directed the performance group MA FISH CO with his wife, artist Margaret Fisher.

[5] Hughes collaborated with diverse artists including Lou Harrison, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa and Ezra Pound,[18][19][20][4] and for more than three decades was a bassoonist in various Bay Area orchestras and groups.

[19] He began composing music while in high school and attended the University of Buffalo (BA, 1956), where he studied composition with Aaron Copland, Carlos Chávez and Leon Kirchner.

[28][37] Under his direction, the YCO's performances, tours and recordings were noted by San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune critics for their inventive programming and readings, responsiveness to diverse styles, musicality and expressiveness.

[45] He led the Arch Ensemble in compositions by Roscoe Mitchell, Pauline Oliveros, Stockhausen and Charles Wuorinen,[30][31][11] as well as in the premiere of Pound's second opera, Cavalcanti (1933), part of an all-Pound concert in 1983.

[46][19] Hughes concluded his conducting career in 1990, leading the Lyon Opera Ballet in two of Frank Zappa’s quirky, angular orchestral scores at the invitation of music director Kent Nagano.

[3][5][28][16] His 1975 score for the US Department of Interior's documentary about the Alaskan wilderness, Magnificence in Trust, combined electronic music integrated with the symphony orchestra, indigenous Inuit vocals and the novel use of elk antlers as a percussion instrument.

[49][50][13] The tragicomic Elegy for Vietnam Followed by a Protest (1967) employed a bassoon quartet, conventional and experimental material, parody (an irreverent quote of Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever) and a "shock ending.

[6][52] Radiances featured an early integration of the synthesizer into orchestral instrumentation; inspired by the poetry of Pound, Robert Browning and William Blake, it was described as an "avant-garde pastoral symphony"[17] whose aural translation of light in all its manifestations was "well-crafted, superbly colored … and immanently listenable.

Amo Ergo Sum (1975) was a Dantesque tribute to Pound that placed his poetry within a dense, dramatic choral setting overlaying sung text fragments, speech, shouts and guttural sounds.

[4] In a complex commission for the OSYO, Cadences (1976), Hughes again employed spatial play with his instrumentalists along with performative elements (including dual conductors) and a collage-like mix of sounds, forms and intergenerational social commentary.

[16][27] In the 1980s and 1990s, Hughes turned to composing for the performance works of Fisher and MA FISH CO.[32][5][12] In these eclectic scores, he delved into electronic and acoustic sounds and pulsating Italian punk-rock (for the anti-war piece War Nerves, based on Pound's "Canto XLV"), among other forms.

[1][19][3] Throughout his career, Hughes conducted research in archives and libraries across the United States and overseas in order to recover, revive and champion overlooked music, including works by Camille Saint-Saëns (Hail, California, 1915) and Robert Louis Stevenson,[41] the artists of his YCO "The Black Composer in America" tour,[38] and Ezra Pound,[24][46] as well as the indigenous instruments and songs of groups such as the Inuit people.

[8] Hughes's work as a scholar was recognized by the Fulbright-Hays Program, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, the American Academy in Rome, Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Ezra Pound Society (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2013, with Margaret Fisher).