Paul Hodgins

Paul Hodgins, Culture OC’s publisher, is an arts and culture journalist who co-founded the Arts & Culture section of Voice of OC and helped manage its transition to Culture OC.

Hodgins was born in Canada, where he studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music and became a professional accompanist by the age of 19. Hodgins worked widely in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. as an accompanist and music professor at Simon Fraser University, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Eastern Michigan University, and many festivals, collaborating with leading European and North American dancers and choreographers. He moved to the U.S. to pursue graduate studies in the 1980s and has lived here ever since.

While completing his doctorate in music at the University of Southern California, Hodgins was a professor of dance at the University of California, Irvine from 1985 to 1992, where he served as music director of the dance department and founding director of the Gassman Electronic Music Studio. After freelancing as a classical music critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune, he became an arts journalist and critic for The Orange County Register, where he wrote principally about theater, dance and classical music for 25 years.

In addition to his expertise in the performing arts, Hodgins has written extensively about wine, jazz, architecture, interior design and urban planning. His work has appeared in American Theatre, Backstage West, Electronic Musician, The Journal of Alta California, Journal of the International Guild of Musicians in Dance, The Sondheim Review, Variety and other publications. His honors include a 2019 National Arts Journalism Award.

Hodgins’ book, Music, Movement and Metaphor, (Edwin Mellen, 1992) established him as one of the foundational scholars of choreomusicology, and it has been cited more than 140 times since its publication. Hodgins has also written three books about California wine.

Hodgins remains active as an educator. He recently served as an adjunct professor at the USC Thornton School of Music and California State University, Fullerton.