Sam Hayden

Sam Hayden (born 1968) is an English composer of classical and electronic music and an academic. His music has won several prestigious prizes and been performed widely at international music festivals.

Hayden was born in Portsmouth and grew up in Balham, South London. He played the trumpet, before turning to writing music at the age of nineteen, having found in the activity of composition "the perfect synthesis of the musical, the creative and the intellectual."

He went on to study with Martin Butler, Michael Finnissy and Jonathan Harvey at the University of Sussex, Joseph Dubiel and David Rakowski at Columbia University, and Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He returned to the University of Sussex to complete his DPhil in 1998.

Hayden's music is written in an atonal, rhythmically complex style, often utilising microtones. He has described his work as "coming from the traditions of 'post-minimalism' and 'new-complexity.'"

Hayden's music is primarily scored for acoustic instruments, but he has also worked extensively with the computer programming environment Max/MSP, notably collaborating with the violinist Mieko Kanno on music for e-violin and computer. He has also used the OpenMusic software (designed at IRCAM) to create computer-generated music.

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