A multiple award-winning composer, Jason Hayes is best known for his long-standing relationship with Blizzard Entertainment. You can hear his music in all of Blizzard’s recent games set in the popular worlds of StarCraft, Diablo and WarCraft. Most recently, he was the lead composer on World of WarCraft. Among other contributions, his specialty has been to write the musical score for the widely acclaimed short animated movies produced by the Blizzard Film Department. In this context, he’s won the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) award for ?Best Cinematic / Cut-scene Audio? two years in a row.
He began his interest in music and interactive media as a child, when he would construct elaborate interactive adventure games for his friends that contained their own musical score using his tape recorder. He?s always had an interest in puzzle solving and creative emotional expression putting music to picture- a good match for working in the computer game industry.
Jason was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a young adult he discovered his passion for music composition while studying piano with the renowned concert pianist, Dr. William Chapman-Nyaho. He started a band of his own and started playing in local clubs. His talents became known in the local music scene, so when the recording artist “Kyper” was looking for a back up band for his national tour, Jason?s band was asked to fill the spot. After touring around the nation for a year, Jason resumed his college studies as a music composition major at the University of North Texas. Soon after, he married the love of his life Tiffany and decided to move to California to enter the professional world. It was then that he began his career as a staff composer at Sierra On-Line, which eventually led to him joining the award-winning development team at Blizzard Entertainment. Recently, he started his own music and sound production company to provide top-notch services to the game industry, as well as branching out to work on films.