In his music, composer Dayton Hare strikes a balance between lyricism and color, narrative and atmosphere. Often drawing inspiration from the natural world, Dayton hopes to raise questions about our relationship to our environment and elevate underappreciated beauty found around us. His music has been performed nationally and internationally at venues like Carnegie Hall and the Salle Cortot by groups such as Bent Frequency, the New York Youth Symphony, Stare at the Sun, Ensemble Variances, Four Corners Ensemble, Mammoth Trio, the Yale Percussion Group, Utari Duo, the Norfolk Festival Chamber Choir, and others. He has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the National Orchestral Institute + Festival, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, the Conservatoire américain de Fontainebleau, and the Norfolk New Music Workshop, and been recognized with artist residencies at the Rabbit Island Foundation and the Vashon Artist Residency. He was the 2024-25 Grand Prize winner of the New York Youth Symphony’s Jon Deak First Music Competition, and has won numerous calls for scores.

Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Dayton received a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music, and Bachelor's degrees in music composition and English literature from the University of Michigan. During the 2024–25 year, he was in residence at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris as the recipient of the Fulbright-Harriet Hale Woolley Award in the Arts, where he composed music that engaged with the city's climate change mitigation efforts. He is currently a DMA student at the Yale School of Music.