2021 Roche Commissions Alex Vaughan

Alexander James Vaughan is an Australian composer born in Sydney in 1987. From the age of 8 he started trombone tuition followed several years later by lessons in jazz and music theory at the 'Music Life - School of Performing Arts', Rouse Hill, Sydney under the direction of Rory Thomas (OAM). After finishing school, Vaughan began a bachelor of music at the 'University of New South Wales' Sydney, studying both composition and jazz trombone. In 2009, Alex Vaughan moved to Weimar, Germany where he continued studying both composition and trombone.

In 2015 he won the Sondershäuser Composition Scholarship as well as the DAAD Prize awarded by the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt. In 2015/16, he then studied composition in Graz, Austria as part of the Erasmus exchange program. In 2017 he finished his Konzertexamen studies in Weimar and has been awarded the Baldreit-Stipendium by the city of Baden Baden for 2017/18.

Among his teachers have been Reinhard Wolschina, Jörn Arnecke, Hansjörg Fink, Michael Obst and Gerd Kühr. Vaughan has also continued to refine his compositional techniques via various masterclasses and private lessons with composers such as Tristan Murail, Pierluigi Billone, Simon Steen-Andersen and Klaus Lang.

Alex Vaughan has been involved in countless projects with ensembles and orchestras of all types and sizes of both contemporary music and jazz. He has composed music for people such as Neil MacGregor (former director of the National Gallery and British Museum) and the Berlin artist Albrecht Gehse. Some of his larger projects include a book of 150 Jazz Canons, his reconstruction of Johann Adam Hiller's opera 'Das Orakel' from the year 1753 as well as several orchestral works. Vaughan currently works in Germany as a free-lance composer and jazz trombonist. He is a strong reformed evangelical Christian whose music is often inspired by and centred on biblical themes.

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