The tuba player, researcher and composer Robin Hayward, born in Brighton, England in 1969, has been based in Berlin since 1998. He has redefined the tuba's potential both in the areas of noise and microtonality, and his compositions for other instruments reflect a similar experimental, medium-specific approach. He has toured extensively both solo and in collaboration, and been featured in such festivals as Maerzmusik, Fri Resonans, Donaueschingen, TRANSIT festival, Ghent Festival of Flanders, Ostrava New Music Days, Sound Symposium, Kiele Tage fur Neue Musik and Wien Modern. Collaborations include such luminaries as Charles Curtis and Roberto Fabbriciani along with leading composers such as Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier. His approach to the tuba has been documented in the solo CDs Valve Division and States of Rushing, as well as various collaborative releases. Active in many contemporary music ensembles, in 2005 he founded Zinc & Copper Works for further exploration of brass instruments.
In 2009 Robin Hayward developed the first fully microtonal tuba together with the music instrument manufacturers B&S, and in 2011 published an extensive article on this new tuba in the Galpin Society Journal, tracing its history back to the original tuba patent of 1835. He has lectured at such institutions as Stuttgart Musikhochschule, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, UDK Berlin, Dartmouth College and Wesleyan University, and is currently doing a doctorate on the acoustics of the recently developed microtonal tuba at the Technical University in Berlin.
Robin Hayward studied tuba and composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and at the University of Manchester, England. His involvement in contemporary music started when he attended a course in 1989 with Giancarlo Schiaffini and Luigi Nono, where he studied Nono's Post-prae-ludium per Donau for tuba and live-electronics.
In 1993 he attended a workshop led by Barry Guy, which led to him joining the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra, where he played alongside many key figures in English improvised music. In 1994 he toured England with Anthony Braxton and the Creative Jazz Orchestra, culminating in the recording of the CD Anthony Braxton with the Creative Jazz Orchestra (Leo Records). From 1994 to 1997 he was an active member of London's improvised music scene. In 1997 he formed the trio rar with Axel Doerner and Radu Malfatti, and recorded a solo for the CD Pure Water Construction (Bruce's Fingers).
Through composing the solo tuba piece Sink for the London Musicians' Collective Fifth Annual Festival of Experimental Music in 1996, he discovered the technique of rotating the tuba's valves, altering their conventional role from one of altering pitch to one of producing noise. His first notated composition to use this technique was Vier Tuben Rauschen, written in 1997 for Melvyn Poore's English Tuba Consort. It was also the first to specify the tubas be placed horizontally, with the bells facing towards the audience, that has since become his standard playing position on the English Eb tuba.
Robin Hayward moved to Berlin in 1998, where, in such groups as Das Kreisen, with Burkhard Beins and Annette Krebs, and roananax, with Andrea Neumann, Axel Doerner and Annette Krebs, he played a key role in the development of a style of improvisation characterized by long silences, reduced dynamics and restrained use of noise that has since been labeled Berlin Reductionism. Following these initial projects came the septet Phosphor, with Burkhard Beins, Annette Krebs, Andrea Neumann, Ignaz Schick, Michael Renkel and Axel Doerner, to be joined a year later by Alessandro Bosetti. In April 2001 the group recorded its first CD Phosphor (Potlatch). The music for Hayward's duo CD with Axel Doerner (Absinth) was also recorded in this year.
In 2001 Hayward's solo violin piece Crank Start appeared on the Aleksander Kolkowski's CD Portrait in Shellac (ASC). This is one of a series of compositions for other instruments to apply a similar medium-specific approach as taken towards the tuba. Exploration of parallels between speech and brass instruments led to the composition in 2008 of Jan van Gorp and Grave Mountain Diagram for horn, trombone and tuba.
In 2009 Robin Hayward developed the first fully microtonal tuba together with the firm B&S, with sponsoring from B&S and support from the Berliner Senat. He is currently doing a doctorate on the acoustics of this microtonal tuba at the Technical University in Berlin.