HOME :: COMPOSERS :: MORGAN HAYES

Morgan Hayes

[Works] ~ [Performances] ~ [STRIP: PRESS REVIEWS]

A brochure containing full details of Morgan Hayes' works is now available for viewing/download in Adobe Acrobat format.

Photograph © Malcolm Crowthers, not to be further reproduced without prior permission

Born in 1973, Morgan Hayes reflects the cultural pluralism of his generation in his open and relaxed attitude to many kinds of musical expression. At the same time, he has pursued a single-minded artistic vision that has won him admirers from among the ranks of enthusiasts for modernism as well as those of the broader musical community, and an impressive list of performances to date, in Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and the USA, as well as in the United Kingdom.

A composer since the age of ten, he had already confidently laid the foundations of his own musical style by the time he won the Guildhall School of Music & Drama's coveted Lutoslawski Prize in 1995, following studies with Michael Finnissy, Simon Bainbridge and Robert Saxton. From each of these teachers he had acquired distinctive skills. Yet it is arguable that the essential decorum of his music - its innate sense of rhythmic poise and melodic profile - is already present in youthful essays such as Only Jesting for piano (1991) or Snapshots (1994). Intensified through refinement of detail and of structure, it blossomed in his first widely acknowledged scores for ensemble, Mirage (1995) and Viscid (1996), the former evoking through an idiosyncratic blending of microtonality and exuberant rhythmical prose the harshly bright landscape of Israel, the latter a condition of matter graphically portrayed in musical terms likewise uniquely the composer's own.

Since then, in a series of ambitious pieces composed for many of Britain's leading new-music ensembles, Hayes has shaped and extended his musical vision to encompass a diversity of forms and expressive modes within a highly original musical language. For the glutinous aspect of Viscid, Shellac (1997) for piano and orchestra, substituted brightness and verve, echoes of which may be heard in the raw vibrations of Slippage, one of four remarkable pieces composed and premiered in 1999. Though separately conceived, together they amount to a summative statement of Hayes's still-developing language: languidly floating in Alluvial, with dominant timbres of piccolo and E flat clarinet; unstable and explosive in Divided Nettings; and light and luminous with a streak of obsessive insistency in Buoy. Add to these the blend of unusual colours in Trio (2000) for piano, violin and bass clarinet, and the intriguing mixed double of contrabassoon and mandolin with strings in Balustrades (2001), plus the exuberant textual exchanges of two works for flexible orchestration premiered in 2000, Boaz and Dislocated Chorales, and the picture emerges of a composer whose breadth of imagination is a continuing source of fascination and musical discovery.

An accomplished pianist, Hayes has also composed an impressive oeuvre of solo music that brilliantly exploits the instrument's potential as catalyst and confessional in both intimate and virtuoso manner. Outstanding contemporary soloists including Andrew Ball, Stephen Gutman, Rolf Hind, Sarah Nicolls, Ian Pace and Jonathan Powell have each identified with facets of its wit, humour, nostalgia and playful energy, qualities also richly present in the piano parts of two vocal works, No Glints in It (2000) written for soprano Loré Lixenberg, and My Compass (2001), for soprano Sarah Leonard. An admirer of the quixotic artistry of Glenn Gould, not least his recording of the Goldberg Variations, Hayes in several keyboard works has turned to the music of Bach and that of other baroque masters including Rameau (in Le Lardon) and Purcell (in Weaving) as source-material for creative fission. This impulse for exchange and interchange with a strongly contrasting musical presence relates, in turn, to Hayes's fascination with the art of keyboard improvisation, and its extension to the applied musics of stage, dance and film.

As 2001-2002 Leverhulme Composer-in-Residence at the Purcell School, Hayes's major achievement was the 'Tatewalks' project, based on Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and involving young composers in collaboration with the distinguished photographer Malcolm Crowthers and with the London Sinfonietta, who featured the work in the 2002 'State of the Nation' festival. In a continuing engagement with the visual arts, Hayes also provided music for the exhibition Jacqueline Morreau: Reflections on Water Music at the Morley Gallery in summer 2003 and further extended his range of reference with an iridescent transcription of Squarepusher's Port Rhombus for the South Bank Centre's 'Ether Festival' in March of that year.

Meanwhile, the successful premieres and recordings of the clarinet concerto Dark Room by Mark van de Wiel and the London Sinfonietta at the 2003 Bath Festival, and the violin-and-piano duo Opera, inspired by Italian director Dario Argento's giallo classic Macbeth and written for Darragh Morgan (http://www.darraghmorgan.com/main.html) and Mary Dullea, signalled a new phase in the composer's creative development. Lute Stop for solo piano was premiered by Sarah Nicolls in December 2003 as part of the BMIC's 'Cutting Edge' season, and in August 2005, at the BBC Promenade Concerts, the composer's debut orchestral work Strip, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Jeseph Swensen, was heard for the first time. More recently, Japanese soloist Keisuke Okazaki and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group gave the first performance of Hayes's Violin Concerto in May 2006, and Senedd Sound, specially written for outdoor performance at Richard Rogers' new Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff, was premiered last September as the focus of the 2006 'Urban Legacies' conference.

This year has seen the successful premiere of the composer's debut work for string orchestra, Futurist Manifesto, commissioned by the Munich Chamber Orchestra and premiered in June 2007. The same month also saw the first performance of a Spitalfields Festival commission, Original Version, making bold use of the unique performance space of Christ Church, Spitalfields, with the Endymion Ensemble conducted by Richard Baker.

© 2007 Stainer & Bell Ltd

Works

These titles can be ordered in our online shop, or, in the case of rental works, through our Hire Library. The items with [PDF] after them are links to free sample pages in the Adobe Actobat format.

Solo Piano

Birthday Capriccio 2001 [1'30''] (Ref. AC191) [PDF]
Conway Hall 1998 [1'30''] (Ref. AC165) [PDF]
Five Distressed Surfaces 1998 [15'30''] (Ref. H407)
Chipped Marble [4'], Flaking Yellow Stucco [2'], Corrugated [2'], Weaving [5'], Only Jesting [2'30'']
Le Lardon (Variations on a theme by Rameau) 1999 [2'] (Ref. AC173) [PDF]
Lute Stop 2003 [6'] (Ref. Y215) [PDF]

This is a big and difficult recital work, inspired by the playing of Gould and Weissenberg and commissioned by the outstanding Sarah Nicolls (for whom these challenges seem to be nothing!). It's clever, brittle, avant-garde and user-friendly...

John York, Piano, November/December 2004

Puppet Theatre 1999 [6'] (Ref. AC174) [PDF]
Strides Book 1. Three pieces for solo piano. 2006 (Ref. Y229) [PDF]
Strides Book 2. Four pieces for solo piano. 2007 [5'] (Ref. Y236) In preparation
Wigmore Hall 2001 [1'30''] (Ref. Y190) [PDF]

Vocal

Citizen Vain 2000 [3'] (Ref. AC178) [PDF]
male voices and piano duet
Handbag 2000, rev. 2001 [3'] (Ref. Y186) [PDF]
for soprano, clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, cello and double bass
My Compass 2001 [3'30''] (Ref. Y188) [PDF]
soprano and piano
No Glints in It 2000 [9'] (Ref. AC185) [PDF]
Song Cycle for voice and piano

Choral Works

Japanese Sweet 2006 (Traditional Japanese) [2'] (Ref. Y235) [PDF]
unison voices, hand-held percussion and piano

Solo Instrument

Lucky's Speech 2006 [3'] (Ref. Y237) [PDF]
solo violin
Totem 1991 [1'30''] (Ref. Y214) [PDF]
solo clarinet

Chamber Works

Alluvial 1999 [6'] (Rental Ref. HL341)
alto flute (doubling piccolo), E flat clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion, piano, violin, 'cello & bass
Balustrades 2001 [7'] (Rental Ref. HL351)
contrabassoon, mandolin and string quintet
Boaz 2000 (Ref. Y187) [PDF] [MP3 Clip]
for flexible instrumental ensemble
Buoy 1999 [5'] (Rental Ref. HL334)
flute (doubling piccolo & alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), piano, viola & 'cello
Dark Room 2003 [13'] (Rental Ref. HL356) [MP3 Clip]
solo clarinet and large ensemble

The sensuality … was supplied by music by other composers, most notably Morgan Hayes's Dark Room - a sexy, very operatic clarinet concerto.

Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 16 February 2004

… Morgan Hayes's teeming but also convincingly evolving Dark Room for clarinet and ensemble.

Keith Potter, The Independent, 20 February 2004

Morgan Hayes's Dark Room, formally a short clarinet concerto, was a luscious wash of decaying and emerging patterns, inspired by the crumbling mansions of Tangier and the hardening images of developing photographs.

H. E. Elsom, ConcertoNet.com, February 2004

Dislocated Chorales 2000 [11'] (Ref. Y180) [PDF]
for 8 groups of instruments
Divided Nettings 1999 [6'] (Rental Ref. HL336)
flute, oboe, B flat clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), bassoon, horn, harp, 2 violins, viola & 'cello

Of the four short pieces heard at the start of the mainly British programme, I especially admired Morgan Hayes' very intense Divided Nettings.

Keith Potter, The Independent, 5/7/1999

Mirage 1995 [10'] (Rental Ref. HL316)
oboe (doubling cor anglais), soprano B flat saxophone, 2 tenor trombones, percussion (2), piano, violin, viola, 'cello & bass
Opera 2003 [7'] (Ref. H448) [PDF] [MP3 Clip]
violin and piano
Recorded by Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea on NMC
Original Version 2007 [12'] (Rental Ref. HL383) [PDF Vn Duo] [PDF Ens 1] [PDF Ens 2]
Two ensembles and violin duo
Ensemble 1: oboe, bass clarinet, trumpet in C, viola
Ensemble 2: flute, alto flute, bass trombone, percussion, piano, cello
Port Rhombus 2003 [4'] (Rental Ref. HL371)
piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, conta bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion (1), piano/celeste, 2 violins, viola, 'cello & bass

Morgan Hayes captured an elegiac melancholy in his transformation of Squarepusher's Port Rhombus.

Tom Service, The Guardian, 10 March 2003

I very much enjoyed Morgan Hayes's iridescent transcription of Squarepusher's Port Rhombus.

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, 16 March 2003

Senedd Sound 2006 [12'] (Rental Ref. HL384) [PDF]
piccolo, clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet, horn, trumpet in C, trombone, percussion (2)
Shellac 1997 [13'] (Rental Ref. HL319) [PDF]
solo piano, flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling cor anglais), B flat clarinet (doubling A, E flat & bass clarinets), bassoon (doubling contra bassoon), 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, percussion (2), harp, celeste, 2 violins, viola, 'cello & bass

The densely packed textures of Shellac, a 13-minute movement for piano and large ensemble by 24-year-old Morgan Hayes - it was premiered by the Athelas Sinfonietta, Copenhagen under Giordano Bellincampi in the booming Church of Our most Holy Redeemer, EC1, as part of the European Discoveries festival - must be just as tricky, though the burden of notes certainly falls on the soloist. He - the ultra-deft Ian Pace standing in for Rolf Hind - has big solos to open and close the piece and near the end, each of a complexity bringing Hayes's teacher Michael Finnissy to mind yet in a "languid" stretch of two-part writing also suggesting the rubato ease of a Chopin or Fauré. An engagingly classical use of repeat marks further qualifies the impression of modernist toughness and tautness made by this highly promising score.

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, 23/11/97

Slippage 1999 [7'] (Rental Ref. HL333) [PDF]
flute, oboe, clarinet, piano, & Str(s) violin, viola, 'cello & bass

There is much more [than deft scoring] to a piece such as Slippage by Morgan Hayes - a microtonal, complexly rhythmic octet in which an eruptive piano solo slips out of the 'geological' layers in which it had been embedded... His idiom with its skewed interplay of lines evokes that of his teacher Michael Finnissy but only as a background against which a new harmonic sweetness and approach to form define themselves.

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, 18/4/1999

Snapshots 1994 [5'] (Ref. Y141) [PDF]
flute, clarinet, violin, cello & piano
Three Buoys 2002 [7'] (Ref. Y198) [PDF]
violin, viola & piano
Trio 2000 [8'] (Ref. AC177) [PDF]
piano, violin & bass clarinet
Viscid 1996, rev. 1997 [10'] (Rental Ref. HL318) [PDF]
flute (doubling piccolo & alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), A clarinet (doubling E flat & bass clarinets), bassoon (doubling contra bassoon), horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion (2), piano (doubling celesta), 2 violins, viola, 'cello & bass

... the music had been powerfully imagined, with glamorous sounds, big gestures, and a suggestion of Birtwistle reheard through a glass darkly. For me this was the evening's real discovery, not so much for what it was as for what it promised.

Michael White, The Independent on Sunday, 12/1/1997

Hayes is still just 23, but in his Viscid he already exhibits a remarkably accomplished grasp of technique and an original ear for content. Played with full commitment by the Brunel players, this sinuous work created a fascinating musical representation of its title, full of note-bending and microtones of youthful vitality.

Matthew Rye, The Daily Telegraph, 11/1/1997

The single movement ... is a poetic flow of often quarter-tonal melodic ideas, thickening and thinning, underpinned by more solid harmony, inflected by prepared piano and tuned percussion, and coming to a sudden, but satisfying, halt.

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, 12/1/1997

The new work was Viscid ... a great title and a promising piece, unfolding tangled skeins of melody over dark block chords.

Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 7/1/1997

String Orchestra

Futurist Manifesto 2007 [10'] (Rental Ref. HL382) [PDF]
String orchestra (minimum 6.5.4.3.1. players)

Morgan Hayes employs monumental accents in his "Futurist Manifesto," creating muffled, bizarre sounds, which transport the listener into a hall filled with machines.

Dorothea Husslein, Münchener Merkur, 14 June, 2007

Orchestral Works

Strip 2005 [c.12'] (Rental Ref. HL374) [PDF] [PRESS REVIEWS]
2 flutes (both doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A (both doubling clarinet in E flat), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion (3), Harp, Piano, Cimbalom, Harmonium, Str(s) 14.12.10.8.6 minimum

Violin Concerto 2006 [16'] (Rental Ref. HL378) [PDF]
flute (doubling piccolo), cor anglais, clarinet (doubling E flat clarinet and bass clarinet), bassoon (doubling double bassoon), horn in F, trumpet in C, trombone, percussion (1), harp, piano & strings

Discography

Dark Room
London Sinfonietta. Martyn Brabbins (cond)
"The Jerwood Series 2"
Label: London Sinfonietta Label. Catalogue Reference SINF CD2-2006
http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk/recordings/shop/shop_saleslist.cfm
[MP3 Clip]

Buoy
Composers Ensemble Peter Wiegold (cond)
"The Hoxton 13"
Label: NMC. Catalogue Reference NMC D076
[MP3 Clip]

Opera
Darragh Morgan (http://www.darraghmorgan.com/main.html) (violin), Mary Dullea (piano)
"Opera"
Label: NMC. Catalogue Reference NMC D108
[MP3 Clip]

'....and a sinister-comic fascination in Morgan Hayes' Opera,which is much the best piece on the CD '

Ivan Hewitt. BBC Music Magazine, August 2006

'.....violin and piano dart in and out of each other 's patterns like children on speed playing hopscotch.it makes an exhilirating conclusion to the disc'

Peter Quantrill. The Strad, July 2006

Perhaps the other two most impressive pieces [besides the Powell and Harrison] are Joseph Phibbs's early Fantasia and the Morgan Hayes composition, Opera, from which the anthology takes its title. That title comes in turn from a film by Dario Argento, and much that Hayes has to say about the movie—'sophisticated melodrama...stylised violence...prowling camerawork...heightened awareness'—applies to his music. The piece has its own vein of melody, moving through unisons in which the instruments shadow one another ('prowling camerawork') and more fully lit passages.

Paul Griffiths. Words and Music (April 2006)

Recent and Forthcoming Performances

Opera
13 November 2007. 9pm. Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, Germany

Strides 1
Renée Reznek
27 November 2007. 1.15pm. Oxford University Church (Oriel Music Society)

Strides 2
Jonathan Powell
28 November 2007. Fountain House, Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg

Strides 1
Le Lardon
Stephen Gutman
7 December 2007. Belgrade City Hall, Serbia

Opera
Pippa Jarvis (violin), Corey Silberstein (piano)
3 February 2008. Brown Hall, New England Conservatory,USA

Snapshots
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. (BCMG Snapshots Tour)
16 February 2008. 8.00pm. Turner Sims Concert Hall - Southampton
17 February 2008. 7.30pm. The Great Hall - Dartington
20 February 2008. 7.30pm. Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall - York
22 February 2008. 8.00pm. The Sage Gateshead
23 February 2008. 7.30pm. Concord College, Acton Burnell - Shrewsbury

Strides 1
Le Lardon
Stephen Gutman
14 March 2008. Artrix, Bromsgrove

Lucky's Speech
New Work
Keisuke Okazaki (violin)
22 April 2008. Tokyo Opera City Hall, Japan

For further information about Morgan Hayes and his works,
please e-mail Caroline Holloway caroline@stainer.co.uk