Hugo Shirley was born and educated in the West of England before he moved to London to study German and Music at King's College.
He has had an interest in music for as long as he can remember, learning the piano from the age of six and avidly collecting recordings on tape and CD from only a couple of years later. As an undergraduate at King's he wrote programme notes for the BBCSO and composer profiles for BBC online and received piano tuition at the Royal Academy of Music from Glen Inanga and Maria Martinova.
It was during his degree that he developed an interest in German opera and literature, spending a year at the University of Vienna and writing his final year dissertations on Richard Strauss's Salome and Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus.
After completing a Master's in Music at King's, focussing on Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, he moved to Vienna for two years where he worked as a translator, took advantage of the State Opera's legendary Stehplätze, and occasionally turned out to play for Vienna Celtic RFU.
After returning to the UK in late 2004 he worked for a while as a classical pianist on cruise ships before returning to King's to embark upon a PhD – an interdisciplinary study of the operas of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss.
He was, from 2005-2007, joint Artistic Director of the Chelsea Schubert Festival, which he co-founded.