Recordings of some of Hayden’s earlier works are now available for streaming via the Soundcloud website.
Recordings of Hayden’s works are also now available for streaming via his YouTube channel.
Recordings of Hayden’s works are also available for streaming via Spotify.
A new release of Sam Hayden's Die Abkehr performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik , is available for download from NMC.
Buy online from NMC
Two of Hayden’s works are now available for streaming via the
RAM 200 PIECES website.
Artefacts (after Tema...) for solo cello performed by Amy Jolly
remnants II for bass trombone performed by Samuel Taber
A new album of Sam Hayden's solo and duo works was released by Métier (Divine Art Recordings) in January 2023, performed by an array of internationally renowned contemporary music specialists.
A preview track of attente II for solo flute, performed by Carla Rees is available here.
The album order page is here. The album is available for order.
A new album of Sam Hayden's complete works for solo piano, performed by Ian Pace has been released by Métier (Divine Art Recordings) in November 2020.
A preview track of Becomings I is available here.
The album order page is here.
Click here for more information.
See Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music review here.
See MusicWeb International review here.
Please contact Sam Hayden here if you wish to buy a physical CD direct from the composer.
See review in Gramophone by Pwyll ap Siôn (1/3/2020): here.
My first introduction to Sam Hayden’s music was in the back room of a low ceilinged bar at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival sometime in the late 1990s, where [rout] – the ensemble he established with fellow composers Paul Newland and Paul Whitty – blew away the cobwebs that clung to contemporary music with performances that were high in physical intensity and volume.
Two of the works featured on this disc, Relative Autonomy and Substratum, capture some of the pressurised energy of that concert. Premiered at the Proms in 2007, Substratum for large orchestra kicks off with fierce explosions of sound, endlessly remoulded and reshaped across a 25 minute timespan in what Hayden has described as the ‘proliferation of self-similar materials’. The work brings to mind the low-lying, densely shifting textures of Birtwistle’s Earth Dances and slowly evolving contours of Finnissy’s Red Earth, although the music’s sonic imprint is unmistakably Hayden’s own.
By contrast, an almost brittle pointillism characterises Relative Autonomy for 16 players – persistent, concentrated bursts often high up in the instruments’ registers that continually threatening to crack open its surface. The idea is developed still further in the 30 minute, seven-movement Transience for string quartet, completed in 2014. Dedicated to Hayden’s teacher, Jonathan Harvey, the work displays what Björn Heile refers to in an excellent set of booklet notes as the strongly gestural qualities that manifest themselves, where ‘gesture’ means not only the movements of the musicians themselves but also the musical shapes they produce. Quatuor Diotima manage this very well, producing a highly sculpted and crafted performance. These gestures take on more percussive forms on the bonus track Die Abkehr, available as a free download via NMC’s online store.
While Hayden’s aesthetic often generates highly animated, complex and concentrated structures, subdued moments also filter through in the string quartet, recalling earlier, more spectral-inspired works such as Presence/absence and Partners in Psychopathology: proof, perhaps, that the gestural substrata revealed in these works still hold future riches for the composer to mine.
Pwyll ap Siôn
A new album of Sam Hayden's large-scale works performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik , Quatuor Diotima, and BBC Symphony Orchestra has been released by NMC.
See review in The Times by Paul Driver (17/11/2019): here.NMC invite to album launch: Download
An additional bonus track Die Abkehr is available for download from NMC.
Hayden’s Frammenti di divenire (fragments of becoming) (2018) for soprano and baritone saxophones is available on YouTube, performed by Michele Selva (baritone sax) and Gianpaolo Antongirolami (soprano sax) - to whom it is dedicated.
Live performance, Area Sismica, Forlì, Italia - 10/3/2019 World premiere.
Hayden’s surface/tension for oboe and piano is available on Métier records, performed by Christopher Redgate and Stephen Robbings.
Sam Hayden's schismatics (2007, rev. 2010) for electric violin and computer, performed by violinist Mieko Kanno and himself on computer, has been selected by Graham McKenzie, Director of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, to be included on a new HCMF 2012 sampler, available for download from the NMC label.
"...Hayden is at this moment one of the most compelling voices in the European new music scene." (Graham McKenzie, November 2012).
schismatics (part 1)
A Hayden Portrait CD (presence/absence) was released in June 2012 as part of the NMC Debut Discs series, including works performed by ELISION (misguided), Trio EKL (system/error), Mieko Kanno (schismatics) and Ensemble Mosaik (presence/absence and Die Modularitäten).
Buy online from NMCNMC Debut Discs Press Release: Download
misguided (opening) system/error (opening) schismatics (part 1) presence/absence (opening) Die Modularitäten (opening)
Scintilla (2007) for solo harpsichord, WIRED - Works for Harpsichord and Electronics, Jane Chapman (NMC D145).
Scintilla (part 2)
presence/absence (2000) for bass flute, baritone saxophone, viola, guitar and percussion, Driftglass, Ensemble Phoenix, Basel
presence/absence (live) - excerpt
Recoil (2001) for oboe and percussion, Oboe+: Berio and Beyond, Christopher Redgate and Julian Warburton (CC2015)
Recoil (opening)
Anthem (2002) for amplified ensemble, [rout]one, (Divine Art 29001) [rout]
Anthem (opening)
Partners in Psychopathology (1998) for six players, The Hoxton Thirteen, Composers Ensemble (NMC D076).
Partners in Psychopathology (opening)
dB[i-vii] (1998) for Hammond organ/synthesizer, bass guitar and drum- kit/percussion, ac/dB[Hayden], (Steamboat Switzerland ) (GROB 316).
dB[v]
Fragment (After Losses) (2003) for solo piano, Breaking Line - New Music for Solo Piano, Stephen Gutman (UTS CD003).
making up for lost time (1994) for music box, Music Box - 32 composities voor muziekdoos (EW 9413).