Sam Hayden has been writing music since he was 19, studying under legendary figures including Michael Finnissy, Jonathan Harvey, Martin Butler and Louis Andriessen. Throughout his career, Hayden’s practice has undergone minor permutations, his electronic music both considering and moving beyond the remits of minimalism, spectralism and new complexity. Swamped with ideas, Hayden deftly synthesises different sounds, somehow holding together works defined by rage and intensity.
Hayden’s Transience was a highlight of hcmf// 2016; taken on by a very brave Quatuor Diotima, Hayden described the piece as an ‘unstable continuum’, with the music ‘ebbing and flowing’ between different realities. Hayden wrote the piece in such a way that made it sound just about stable. Typical of him, it was full of ambiguity – after all, not resolving things makes them all the more memorable.