A diversity of work extends definitions with a banquet of chamber music, performance, intermedia, theater, film and dance scores, electronics, and conceptual ephemera…Browsing this catalog invites disbelief that all these things really happened. Yet here is the evidence of a life in social interaction with musical ideas as a medium.
Distinct qualities give this work profile: simplicity, humor, transparency of conception, the intrigue of unusual social situations. At times Hayman’s events seem preposterous, yet participation reveals a beguiling and pleasing alteration of listening consciousness.
Participation of the audience is essential, joining the performance experience across the fence of passive judgement. Examples are: Heartwhistle, a sounding of audience heart and breath; Bellroll, a public passing street rolling action; I say I see… chant; Blindsound event for blind audience; and his extended all night Dreamsound event for sleeping audience. On the Way… recreates a near death experience in an ambient light and sound environment.
Hayman calls these intermedia works “live acoustic social phenomena” or “lasp”. The events must be performed live; recordings are merely documentary. “Acoustic” indicates their basis in sound and listening. “Social” is the quality of human interaction as an active as an active element. “Phenomena” is the varied vocabulary of sound and social situation which create unique experiences.
Other works in this catalog are more conventional in the sense that they, as Hayman would say “linear music transmission.” A listener or performer can read a score, hear a recording, see a video in the privacy of their own receiver mind without lasp. It is a tradition in new music that much work is verbally described, difficult to notate, scored in broad parameters, improvised or left as an unrealized or unrealizable conception. Herein one will find all these things. But there are also precisely notated scores for more standard performance and interpretation.
The symphonic and ensemble works are readily performed with unusual effect. Dali for orchestra is a comedy scored onto a toothpick. Waves is a direct transposition into music of ocean wave patterns, a kind of musical surf. Equestriana is music for symphonic band with choreography for equestrian drill team, part of the Horse Opera event designed with Charlie Morrow.
Other music reflects Hayman’s work in Asia. Study of Chinese instruments has produced a series of solo and ensemble works for their unique timbres. These include scores for award winning films, dance companies, and the Chinese American country western opera Fireworks. Tiananmen Echo for the Chinese lute and bamboo flute is dedicated to the martyrs of the democracy movement.
Hayman’s oeuvre is bold and gentle, provocative and pleasing, imaginative and down to earth. As he says, “the work is tangible spirit based on the awareness of sound, mingling meditation, mystery, humor, and human response. I seek the unheard… for people, who are the source of my life. It is done with love, caring, continuance, and ecstasy. I do this because it is the most real and imagined, detached and involved, earthy and ethereal way I can live and never know what will be next.”