DeutschHayden Chisholm
Saxophone, overtone singing, composition
Few artists have shaped the Incense of Music series as much as Hayden Chisholm – from Concert No. 4 in 2015 to Concert No. 54 in 2024, he has appeared in nine concerts in total, as soloist, composer, and collaborator.
Hayden Chisholm was raised in New Plymouth, New Zealand, by parents Heather and Doug Chisholm. His first musical experiences came with local Dixieland bands. He began playing clarinet at age nine before switching to what became his primary instrument, the alto saxophone, two years later. The early influences of Johnny Hodges, Sun Ra, and Eric Dolphy were strong, being his first jazz records. He was a member of the award-winning New Plymouth Boys' High School Jazz band and won the prize for Most Outstanding Jazz Musician at the National Jazz Festival in Tauranga in 1991. With a DAAD scholarship, Chisholm attended the Musik Hochschule in Cologne, Germany, where he studied saxophone with Frank Gratkowski. In 1997 he received the New Zealand Young Achievers Award, which enabled him to continue his studies abroad. During these years he also studied Carnatic music in Chennai and travelled extensively in the Balkans, learning the different musical traditions there.
During his studies in Cologne, Chisholm developed a system of microtonal fingerings for saxophone and so-called "split-scales," which he presented on his 1996 debut solo CD "Circe" on Jazzhaus Musik – these scales split perfect intervals using quarter tones. His microtonal work was later featured on the Root70 album "Root70 on 52nd ¼ Street," which received the German Record Critics' Award. During his studies in Cologne he met many musicians he still collaborates with today, including Marcus Schmickler, Nils Wogram, John Taylor, Felix Fan, Adrian Brendel, Burnt Friedman, Jochen Rückert, Antonis Anissegos, Jaki Liebezeit, and Claudio Bohórquez. He also worked under Mauricio Kagel, who was then professor for composition.
From 1995 he toured India, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, including with pianist John Taylor. Since 2000 he has collaborated with German artist Rebecca Horn and composed the music for the documentary "Moon Mirror Journey." In 2008 he was assistant director at the Salzburg Festspiele for the opera "Luci mie traditrici" by Salvatore Sciarrino. In 2012 Chisholm was featured in the documentary "Sound of Heimat – Deutschland singt," directed by Arne Birkenstock and Jan Tengeler, in which he travels through Germany exploring authentic forms of German folk music. In 2013 he was awarded the SWR Jazz Prize for his "unique sound aesthetic"; that same year he released a 13-CD box set, "13 Views of the Heart's Cargo," presenting his most important recordings dating back to 2001 – the first CD in this box, "Love in Numbers," features works for saxophone in which Chisholm explores the Fibonacci series as it manifests in the overtone series. In 2015 Hayden Chisholm contributed to "Waywords and Meansigns," a collaborative project setting James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" to music. His course "The G-string of Pythagoras" fuses saxophone, just intonation, ancient music theory, and improvisation.
Featured in the following concerts
