Hayes Biggs

Hayes Biggs was born in Huntsville, Alabama and raised in Helena, Arkansas. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Columbia University, a Master of Music degree in composition from Southern Methodist University, and a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Rhodes College. His teachers include Don Freund, Mario Davidovsky, Jack Beeson, Fred Lerdahl, and Donald Erb. Biggs has been a fellow in composition at the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley, the Tanglewood Music Center, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. Other honors include a residency at Copland House and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Biggs has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Riverside Symphony, the Florilegium Chamber Choir, Rhodes College, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and organist Gail Archer. He is a professional choral singer in the New York City area, and from 1991 to 2001 was Associate Editor at C. F. Peters Corporation.

Biggs’s music has been heard throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Latin America, in performances by the NDR-Chor, the Gregg Smith Singers, the New Calliope Singers, the New Amsterdam Singers, the New York Virtuoso Singers, Kiitos, the Florilegium Chamber Choir, the Locrian Chamber Players, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Riverside Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, Voices of Change, Musicians’ Accord, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Empyrean Ensemble, Parnassus, the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, the Concord Ensemble, C4, and the League of Composers/ISCM. His works, published by C. F. Peters Corporation, APNM, and Margun Music, Inc., may be heard on the Albany, PARMA, and Pro Organo labels. He is a member of BMI.

He has been a Manhattan School of Music faculty member since 1992.

Photo by Da Ping Lao