Works Chosen for the 2025 ISCM World New Music Days

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Today, we’re pleased to announce that Sam Hayden’s work Die Abkehr has been selected to represent Britain at the 2025 ISCM World New Music Days.

Chosen from the ISCM British Section shortlist, Sam’s piece will be performed at this year’s festival, which takes place in Portugal from May 30 to June 7, 2024. The work, composed for Large Ensemble, will feature alongside a rich programme of innovative contemporary music from around the world.

The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) is a global network spanning around 50 countries, dedicated to the promotion and performance of new music. Sound and Music proudly represents the British Section of the ISCM, supporting British composers in showcasing their work at the annual ISCM World New Music Days Festival.

On being selected by the international jury, Sam told Sound and Music:

“It is an incredible honour to have my piece Die Abkehr selected to represent Britain at the 2025 ISCM festival in Portugal. I am truly grateful for the acknowledgement of such an esteemed international jury, at a time when music, and the arts more generally, have been under attack in the UK. It is a real privilege for me get to hear one of my larger-scale works, especially at such a high-profile festival such as this, which brings together the wider international contemporary music community in such an intense and vital manner.”

Sam describes his selected work, Die Abkehr, below:

“Die Abkehr is part of a cycle of my recent pieces that combine ideas adapted from ‘spectral’ traditions with stochastic approaches to composition, where aspects of the pitch and rhythmical materials are computer-generated then later modified much more intuitively. The work, originally written for the Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, is constructed around gradual transitions between 24TET microtonal pitch fields and harmonic spectra with extensive use of woodwind multiphonics and overtone harmonics. The sonic surfaces are in a constant state of flux and disturbance, moving between dense linear polyphonies and clearer sustained timbres, a restless dialectic between individual line and collective totality which never quite resolves. The piece is notionally in three movements, although runs continuously, yet is also highly episodic and fragmented where continuity can be disrupted by unexpected interruptions and pauses at any moment. Although the music is abstract and non-representational, the title of the work (which can also translate as Renunciation or Turning Back) hints at a rejection of the increasingly nostalgic and inward-looking culture of the UK that dominated at the time of its composition, an implicit critique embodied in the compositional methods themselves.”