The tuba player and composer Robin Hayward, born in Brighton, England in 1969, has been based in Berlin since 1998.
He has introduced revolutionary playing techniques to brass instruments, initially through the discovery of the ‘noise-valve’, and later through the development of the first fully microtonal tuba in 2009. In 2012 he invented the Hayward Tuning Vine, originally as a visualisation of the harmonic space implicit within the microtonal tuba. In 2005 he founded the ensemble Zinc & Copper Works to explore brass chamber music from an experimental music perspective.
Robin Hayward 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, Kieler Tage für Neue Musik and Wien Modern. Collaborations include such musicians as Charles Curtis and Roberto Fabbriciani, along with composers such as Christian Wolff, Alvin Lucier and Eliane Radigue. His approach to the tuba has been documented in the solo CDs Valve Division, States of Rushing and Nouveau Saxhorn Nouveau Basse, along with various collaborative releases. He has lectured at such institutions as Musikhochschule Stuttgart, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, UDK Berlin, Dartmouth College and Wesleyan University.
Robin Hayward is currently doing a doctorate on the acoustics of the recently developed microtonal tuba at the Technical University in Berlin.