Hayden Sam

I sometimes think of the process of composing as creating the conditions from which new sounds can emerge. Composing is about finding sounds that I haven't yet thought of.
I believe in the critical potential of music as a living cultural practice and reject postmodern cynicism. I argue for the cultural necessity of an art that exists between categories, resists commodification and asserts the possibility of difference.’
Sam Hayden

Sam Hayden (b.1968, Portsmouth) studied composition with Jonathan Harvey and Michael Finnissy (Sussex University), Joseph Dubiel and David Rakowski (Columbia University) and Louis Andriessen (Royal Conservatory, The Hague). He completed a DPhil with Martin Butler at the University of Sussex in 1998. He co-directs ensemble [rout] and performs with composer Tom Hall in the laptop improvisation duo butterflyCut . He is currently Lecturer in Music at the University of Sussex.
He won the 1990 Cornelius Cardew Prize and the prize of the 1998 International Young Composers' Meeting, Apeldoorn. mv (1992, rev. 93/02) for orchestra won the 1995 Britten International Competition and was recorded by the BBCSO for broadcast during the BBC Radio 3 ‘Hear and Now’ programme in 2003. Bleeding Chunk (1996) performed by the ASKO ensemble, received a special mention at the 1996 Gaudeamus New Music Week, Amsterdam. In 2000 he undertook a summer residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria. He was also awarded the Fulbright Chester Schirmer Fellowship in Music Composition 2001 to work with Brian Ferneyhough and at CCRMA (Stanford University). He won the 2003 Christoph Delz Foundation Competition with Sunk Losses (2002), composed during a residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart and performed during the ‘Festival im 21. Jahrhundert’ in Saarbrücken in 2003 by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Hayden's Faber Music Millennium Series commission Collateral Damage (nominated by Jonathan Harvey) was premièred by Kokoro in 2000 and was also performed in 2003 by the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Pompidou Centre, Paris. Le Retour à la Raison (2003) for solo percussion and live electronics was commissioned for Miquel Bernat of Ictus and premièred during Ars Musica 2004 in Brussels. Emergence (2004) for solo accordion, ensemble and live electronics, commissioned for Frode Haltli and the Oslo Sinfonietta, was performed at the 2004 Ultima and Huddersfield festivals. Relative Autonomy (2004), commissioned for the London Sinfonietta, was performed at a BBC invitation concert at LSO St Luke's, London, in 2005, and at the Berlin Philharmonie during MaerzMusik 2005. Impetus (2005) for solo percussion was premièred by Claire Edwardes at the 2005 HCMF. system/error (2005) for flute, violin and percussion, was premièred by the La Berge / Kanno / Edwardes trio during the 2006 Gaudeamus New Music Week. Hayden's Substratum (2006), commissioned by BBC Radio 3, was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson, at the Royal Albert Hall during the 2007 BBC Proms. Current projects include works for Canto Battuto, Mieko Kanno, Ensemble Mosaik and Mats Scheidegger.
Other commissions have included works for Ensemble Cattrall, Composers Ensemble (Brighton and Hoxton Festivals), Gary Cooper, London Sinfonietta (State-of-the-Nation and Bath Festivals), Orkest de Ereprijs, Okeanos, Orkest de Volharding, RNCM Wind Orchestra (Aldeburgh Festival) and Steamboat Switzerland (HCMF, Ultima, Rumor Festival and Zürich Tage für Neue Musik). Other performers of his music include Ensemble Antidogma (BIG Torino 2000), BCMG, Dominik Blum (IGNM Zürich), Ensemble Ernst (Ultima), Ensemble Exposé (BMIC Cutting Edge), Gemini, GNOM, Stephen Gutman, Rolf Hind, Clemens Merkel (ISCM, Essen), Philip Mead, New Noise (Hoxton Festival), The New Music Players (BMIC Cutting Edge), NYYD Ensemble (NYYD'01, Gaida and Time of Music, Viitasaari), Ensemble Orchidee, Ensemble SurPlus and [rout] (BMIC Cutting Edge Tour).
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