Robert Hughes

4 solo voices: SATB 2 flutes Bb Clarinet Contrabassoon Alto Sax Tenor Sax Electric Guitar / Dulcimer Electric Bass Harmonium Piano Percussion (1-3 players) Drone

“A Happy Marriage of Jazz and Poetry,” music review, Oakland Tribune, Tues., July 25, 1967, by Marilyn Tucker. 

“Witty, imaginative and filled with humor, Miss Storm’s poems take sharp pleasure in the poetic observance of small things in life’s parade: a gutter of empty beer cans or a baby girl high above the world as she is carried on the shoulders of her bearded father. . . .

Notes:

In this work, Hughes set to music the poems of his good friend Hester Glory Storm, pen name for Ann Rivington (b. Chicago 1903, d. San Francisco 1979), a popular though now-neglected San Francisco “Beat” poet of a vibrant literary scene. Storm was also English-language music critic for The Chinese World, which ran the banner, ‘America’s Only Bilingual Chinese-English Daily Newspaper.’”

A Storm Cycle premiered Sunday, July 23, 1967 at the legendary Old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach. The versatile Don O’Brien played the Bb and Bass Clarinets, Alto and Tenor Sax, and Electric Bass parts. It was programmed again on Feb. 28, 1971, but the music languished in the composer’s (wine) boxes. This new publication in 2026 courtesy of Second Evening Art and ACA.

Available separately: full score, set of 9 instrumental parts, and score for vocal quartet, in print or digital format.