Songwriter, opera librettist, playwright, and screenwriter Hugh Moffatt has been creating works of emotional depth and screwball insight for more than forty years.
The list of artists who have recorded Hugh Moffatt’s songs is international and multi-dimensional. They range in styles from Patti Page to Kesha and include Jerry Lee Lewis, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Alabama, and Johnny Cash and many others in pop, country, bluegrass, traditional, and gospel from around the world. These recordings include the chart-topping country singles “Just in Case” by Ronnie Milsap, “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You” (w/Pebe Sebert) first by Joe Sun and then by Dolly Parton, and “How Could I Love Her So Much” by Johnny Rodriguez, and the Southern Gospel hit “Roll Away...
Songwriter, opera librettist, playwright, and screenwriter Hugh Moffatt has been creating works of emotional depth and screwball insight for more than forty years.
The list of artists who have recorded Hugh Moffatt’s songs is international and multi-dimensional. They range in styles from Patti Page to Kesha and include Jerry Lee Lewis, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Alabama, and Johnny Cash and many others in pop, country, bluegrass, traditional, and gospel from around the world. These recordings include the chart-topping country singles “Just in Case” by Ronnie Milsap, “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You” (w/Pebe Sebert) first by Joe Sun and then by Dolly Parton, and “How Could I Love Her So Much” by Johnny Rodriguez, and the Southern Gospel hit “Roll Away the Stone” by Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters.
As a performing artist, Moffatt has released 11 albums and toured extensively around the world. His albums are LOVING YOU, TROUBADOUR and DANCE ME OUTSIDE (duets with Katy Moffatt) for Rounder Records, THE LIFE OF A MINOR POET for Watermelon Records, LIVE AND ALONE for Brambus Records in Switzerland, THE WOGNUM SESSIONS (The Hugh Moffatt Trio) for Strictly Country Records in the Netherlands, GHOSTS OF THE MUSIC for Brambus, and SONGS FROM THE BACK OF THE CHURCH, ONLY ALONG FOR THE RIDE, and NOW AND THEN (duets with Katy Moffatt) on Sohl Recordings. Sony Australia also released a 17-song compilation from his first two albums under the title, THE WAY LOVE IS.
He is, with composer Michael Ching, the librettist for three original operas. Two are one-acts: King of the Clouds, commissioned and premiered by Dayton Opera in 1993, and Out of the Rain, commissioned jointly by Opera Delaware, the Kansas City Lyric Opera and Opera Memphis and premiered by Opera Delaware in 1998. These operas have each had multiple productions. Ching and Moffatt’s full-length opera, Corps of Discovery, A Musical Journey, commissioned by the University of Missouri and based on the Lewis & Clark expedition, premiered in May of 2003 in Columbia, Missouri. Opera Memphis produced the professional premier in April of 2004. Fargo Opera and the University of Idaho have also mounted independent productions. In 2010, Opera Memphis presented the first performances of Gluck’s classic opera, Orpheus and Euridice, with a new English translation by Moffatt and Ching.
Four of Moffatt’s short plays, The Truth, Leaving Home, The Mome Raths, and The Alien, have been produced in Nashville by the Pulp Friction 10-minute Play Festival.
Moffatt has an MFA in Writing (Screenwriting) from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. He has taught songwriting and/or music business courses for Nashville State Community College, Danville Community College, and Middle Tennessee State University. He is the brother of singer-songwriter Katy Moffatt.