Hayes Greenfield is a saxophonist, composer and educator who has been working and living in New York City since the late 1970s. Hayes has earned awards in all of his endeavors, released numerous critically acclaimed albums under his own name and traveled throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, performing at international festivals, concerts and clubs with his own bands. As a sideman, he has built enduring associations with such notable artists as Jaki Byard, Rashied Ali, Paul Bley, Dave Liebman, Barry Altschul, Tony Scott, Richie Havens and Joe Lee Wilson, among others.
Always a restless creator, Hayes continues to push the boundaries by embracing today's technology. He does this by processing his acoustic alto saxophone, flute, Kalimba and voice through an extensive guitar effects pedal and looper rig, which enables him to create an orchestra of textures and ranges right at his fingertips. Performing solo, live and in quad, this surround-sound environment provides a unique, rich and lusciously immersive listening experience.
In 1998, Hayes created his widely acclaimed Jazz-A-Ma-Tazz CD, a lively, interactive, educational jazz music performance/workshop/professional development program. Jazz-A-Ma-Tazz has performed internationally for well over 250,000 young people. Hayes received the prestigious New York University SCPS/GSP Marc Crawford Jazz Educators Award in 2005. In 2009, he released his second award-winning family album Music for a Green Planet, which celebrates green, renewable and sustainable energy.
As film composer, Hayes has scored more than 70 films, documentaries, commercials and TV specials. Many of these have received awards, including a prestigious Emmy (George Marshall and the American Century) and two Tellys (The Nature of Modernism: E. Stewart Williams and William Krisel, Architect). Other notable films Hayes has scored include The American Nurse (2014) and PBS films America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero (2002), Return to Ground Zero (2006), Building Alaska (2010) and Alaska, the World, and Wally Hickel (2013). He has also composed for films documenting luminary artists Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Grace Hartigan, James Rosenquist and Milton Glaser; architects Philip Johnson and Donald Wexler; United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins; The Berlin Airlift and Russia's Future for the New Millennium.
In 2006, Hayes developed the Greenfield Method, a method for non-music, general pre-K thru 1st grade teachers to work with sound and silence with their students. The Greenfield Method enhances children's executive function abilities with self-regulation and inhibitory control, working memory and creative and cognitive flexibility. It also improves hand-eye coordination and socialization, and it helps raise self-esteem.
