Hugh's feature spread in The Performing Songwriter came after touring full- time for less than a year. Since then, he has gone on to establish a national reputation as being "among the most powerful of the new breed of singer songwriter." He is also one of a handful of American folk artists to tour successfully in Europe. At home he has played major folk venues across the country and has appeared with Greg Brown, Dar Williams, John Gorka, Suzanne Vega, and others. The Victory Review described his writing as "lush poetry . . . with a deep consciousness of the human condition . . . . Hugh's visions can be apocalyptic, grounded in gritty reality, compassionate, bitterly ironic, or all of the above." All of this is delivered with a guitar and a vocal style that has been called "distinctive" and "authoritative" by The Boston Globe and Guitar Extra. His live performances and new songs on love, politics, and art reveal an unexpectedly pointed sense of humor that Relix says "recalls the late great Steve Goodman."

"Hugh is one of maybe three songwriters I know who deserves to be called a poet."
-- Pierce Pettis

Hugh's first two albums, The Strong in Spirit and Barehanded, won several media awards and Barehanded charted on CMJ. Mozart's Money, his third release on Prime-CD, expanded his audience and received significant airplay on progressive commercial and alternative college radio stations. With songs ranging from the less-than-nostalgic memories of "Waiting for the Good Humor Man" to an elegy for the late Kurt Cobain, Mozart's Money explores new territory both musically and lyrically. It also features more ambitious production than his previous work. Produced by David Seitz, it includes performances by Lucy Kaplansky, Mindy Josten, Gideon Freudmann, Mark Dann, Michael Visceglia, Denny McDermott, and Madwoman in the Attic. Its stealth track, "When Hiroshima Comes to Disneyland," has become a true underground classic.

"AN ARTIST WHO IS GROWING." --The Boston Globe

Hugh has performed four times at the Kerrville Folk Festival and three times each at the Martha's Vineyard Songwriter Retreats, the Folk Next Door at WWUH in Hartford, and the Fast Folk Revue at the Bottom Line in New York City. He has toured Europe twice, playing in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Holland. He works extensively thoughout the Northeast and makes regular junkets to the midwest, southeast, southwest, and recently California as well. His festival appearances include the Two Harbors Folk Festival, Hartland Folk Festival, Bethlehem Musikfest, Ramapo Mountain Folk Festival, and the Northeast Folk Alliance showcase. Last year he played at the National Poetry Slam Finals and will play the 1998 Sunken Garden Poetry Series, opening for National Book Award winner Hayden Carruth. Hugh's appearances at the 1995 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival were especially memorable, featuring the "Boomers and X-ers" workshop, a memorable duet with Richard Shindell and a shared set with Ani Di Franco, Greg Greenway and the Flirtations for the festival's finale.

"Hugh is an excellent writer with a musican’s ear, a poet’s eye for visual imagery and a philosopher’s view of every situation, from matters of eternity to the daily details of marriage (sometimes all in the same piece)."
-- Nerissa Nields

Hugh's songs have appeared on many compilations, including twelve issues of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, three Folk Next Door compilations, On A Winter's Night, Performing Songwriter's Editor's Choice vol. 1, and the Postcrypt 30th anniversary album. His best-known song, "Brothers," appears in Cherry Lane's new songbook, The Best of Contemporary Folk, and both "Brothers" and "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew" have appeared recently in Sing Out! Magazine. His duet with Dar Williams on "The Kind of Love You Never Recover From" has become the most-played track off Big League Babe, Vol. 2, the new tribute album to Christine Lavin.

"A POST-NIHILIST REBEL ROMANTIC." --Guitar Extra

Hugh's most recent work clearly shows him as a contemporary poet who is planted firmly in the modern world without succumbing to its terrors--at least not yet. In his songs, love is difficult without being tragic, and idealism is more heroic for never expecting to be fulfilled. In his hands, the political scandals of our day are occasions for biting satire instead of bitterness.

Hugh was born in New York City and has lived in New York, Boston, Chicago, and most recently, rural New England. He is a former Associate Editor of Fast Folk and has taught poetry, song and writing at N.Y.U., Bard College, and Eastern Connecticut State University, where he was once did a stint as an Assistant Professor. He has been known to wear dark shades and play tenor sax at the Fast Folk Revues

Hugh's Website: hughblumenfeld.com