Hourihan wrote and directed the feature film Glissando, based upon a short story by Robert Boswell, which won numerous Best Picture and Best Actors awards on the film festival circuit.
He died during a 1946 Baltimore concert, shortly after performing the clarinet glissando at the beginning of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
The cello soloist's final note of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Variations requires the player to play and retune in one movement, creating a dramatic glissando effect to the A below the cello's normal lowest note of C.