Indra Hughes

About the artist

Dr Indra Hughes received his early musical training at the Cathedral in Blackburn, Lancashire, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was Organ Scholar and also took a degree in Law. He went on to study under the late Dr John Scott, the Director of Music of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and holds the Gerald H Knight Memorial Prize for the highest marks in the RCO Choir Training Diploma examinations.

He held a number of church music positions in England before moving to New Zealand as Organist and Director of Music at Auckland Cathedral. The opening of the completed cathedral in November 1995 was one of three occasions for which Indra was invited to direct the music for Her Majesty The Queen. He also worked as a freelance conductor, organist, harpsichordist, examiner, and speaker and as a well-known and frequent broadcaster for Radio New Zealand, and served as National President of the New Zealand Organ Association for six years.

He was the founder and, for fifteen years, Conductor of Musica Sacra, one of the finest and most successful choirs in New Zealand, much admired for the warmth and passion of its thrilling singing, the wide range of its repertoire and its emphasis on the highest performance standards. Since the founding of the choir in 1998, Musica Sacra grew under Indra's leadership into one of the country's foremost cultural assets. In March 2011 Indra and Musica Sacra brought the celebrated German countertenor Andreas Scholl to Auckland for a sold-out concert at Auckland Town Hall. The choir enjoyed glowing international reviews, and three of its four CDs were Number One in the Classical Charts.

In 2007 he became the first person in New Zealand to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts (University of Auckland), with a thesis presenting new theories about the unfinished ending of Contrapunctus 14 from JS Bach's The Art of Fugue; he also performed this monumental work on tour around New Zealand and England after studying Bach’s original manuscripts at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. In September 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

As Chairman of the Friends of the Auckland Town Hall Organ, Indra worked for 10 years with the City Council and the Town Hall Organ Trust on the project to build the new organ. He was one of the organists for the opening of the organ in 2010, and was also invited to give one of the official inaugural recitals—a concert which attracted an estimated audience of 1,350. Since then, he has given more concerts on the new organ than any other organist, including as recently as November 2025.

In January 2024 Dr Hughes relocated to Hobart where he now works for the Tasmanian Department of Justice. From time to time he can be heard assisting at All Saints, South Hobart. Examples of his work as organist, conductor, and broadcaster can be found on the Radio New Zealand website, on Spotify, and on YouTube.