Thank you for visiting the website of composer William Hawley. He passed away together with his wife Jyoti at his home in Bass Harbor, Maine, in December of 2025.

Please feel welcome to browse his website, including his professional biography and list of works.

Tributes:

“Bill and Jyoti Hawley and I enjoyed a close collegial relationship for nearly a decade, during which time I had the privilege of performing two of Bill’s largest symphonic works: Songs of Kabir, and Seattle (based on the famous oration of our Chief Seattle.) My entire organization mourns his tragic passing and we will miss him greatly as a friend and choral ally.” 
Freddie Coleman
Founding Conductor & Artistic Director
Seattle Choral Company

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“Choral Arts Northwest treasured its relationship with William Hawley. His music seemed a perfect fit for us --- lyrical, beautifully crafted, and imminently singable. Each section of the choir reveled in the physical joy of singing his vocal lines. And when those individual lines combined with the others of the choir, the result was something magical, otherworldly even. We are so grateful to William for the beauty he shared with us and with the larger choral community. His voice will be missed.”
Robert Bode
Artistic Director Emeritus of Choral Arts Northwest

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“I met Bill and Jyoti when we were all students together at The California Institute of the Arts. After we all graduated, Bill and I worked together as founding members of the Independent Composers Association, also known as the ICA. Bill's role in the programming was predominantly acoustic. I remember his solo piano piece called CAGE, which consisted entirely of the four notes C A G & E, and how it delighted many of us for its sparse simplicity, while scandalizing others for the same reason. Bill's late-70s ICA contributions consisted of early instrumental chamber music and vocal settings.The pieces he brought to the ICA platform leaned into dense, microtonal acoustic interactions and close harmonic structures. He used the physical spaces of the art galleries to experiment with how acoustic instruments naturally phased and resonated in a room without amplification. This exploration of pure harmonic beauty directly paved the way for the lush, acclaimed Neo-Romantic choral works he became internationally recognized for in the 1980s and 1990s (such as his Six Madrigals). 

I knew Jyoti first by her given name Kiyoko, both as a pianist and as a collegue working in the CalArts Music Library. As a pianist she brought a fierceness that belied the usual cliché about demure Japanese femininity. She had tremendous energy both on and off the stage, a firecracker in a barely five-foot container. But being with Bill always seemed to calm her down. Ironically he was the her zen. Bill's calm demeanor and kind energy was remarkable.

Both during and after CalArts,  we socialized often when they were living in California and also whenever I visited New York after they moved to their 57th Street apartment. Jyoti she was a great cook and they were both great hosts. I regret I never had a chance to visit them in Maine.

They were each, in their quiet way, two remarkable people. I miss them and wish them all the best, now that they have changed their frequencies to another spectrum.”
Carl Stone
Composer and founding member of the Independent Composers Association