His study of the piano began at the age of four, played tenor drum in the orchestra pit of The King And I at the age of five which his father was conducting, and performed his first composition in concert at the age of eleven. He won a second prize medal for piano solo from the New York State Music Awards at fifteen and subsequently toured with a series of rock 'n' roll bands including Man on CBS Records and Jobriath on Elektra Records.
As a composer, Wayne opened a new theater for the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles with his metaphorical circus Wire, won national first place (1987) from the National Institute for Music Theater with NEON (A Street Opera). In 2002, NEON won a 25,000 DM prize in the Prague Opera Competition.
He was commissioned to write In Memoriam: A Celebration by the Interfaith Concert of Holocaust Remembrance, which premiered at Saint John the Divine in New York in 1993. This was subsequently linked with Sinfonietta No. 1: The Klezmer and An Elegy Into Madness, specifically commissioned for the Fiftieth Anniversary of Israel, and titled A Triptych, which had its world première at Mandel Hall, the University of Chicago in January 1998.
