BIOGRAPHY
Alexander James Vaughan is an Australian composer born 1987 in Sydney. He currently resides and works as a free-lance composer, jazz trombonist and computer programmer in Germany, where he has lived since 2009. He studied both composition and jazz trombone, finishing his ‘Konzertexamen’ (Concert Exam) studies in composition in 2017 at the University of Music Weimar.
Alex Vaughan has written music for countless ensembles and orchestras of all types and sizes of both contemporary music and jazz and has well over a decade of extensive experience working with professional orchestras as a composer, arranger, restorer and consultant. In addition to this he is heavily involved in the area of music digitization, sound analysis as well as musical artificial intelligence and has built numerous composition tools, a small handful of which are available for public use (see ‘PROGRAMS’).
Among his awards are the “Sonderhäuser Composition Scholarship”, the “Baldreit-Stipendium” awarded by the city of Baden-Baden 2017, the “Thüringer Kompositionspreis” 2018, “Roche Young Commissions” awarded by Roche and the Lucerne Festival 2019-2021 and the “Casa Baldi” Rome Scholarship 2022. His teachers and mentors include Jörn Arnecke, Reinhard Wolschina, Hansjörg Fink, Michael Obst, Gerd Kühr and Wolfgang Rihm. Alex Vaughan has been teaching in the theory department of the University of Music Weimar since 2017.
Most importantly however, Alex Vaughan is washed in the blood of the lamb! He is a reformed evangelical Christian whose music is often inspired by and centred on biblical concepts and themes.
AS A TROMBONIST
Vaughan was raised as a jazz trombonist. 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). His teenage years were dominated by jazz and were spent playing in 3-4 jazz combos and big bands a week. Vaughan then later studied jazz trombone at the HfM Weimar with the trombonist Hansjörg Fink.
Although he gradually became more and more involved in the area of contemporary music and now works primarily as a contemporary composer, Alex Vaughan still regularly performs as both a jazz and contemporary trombonist and can be heard on many recordings of his own music.
AS A PROGRAMMER
Although he studied music, Vaughan has over 15 years’ experience in IT. He financed his musical studies by developing websites. Over time he began to branch out and look into the potential of software development as a means of creating musical material. Today, one of his primary focusses is the area of computer generated composition and artificial intelligence and has been commissioned to write musical programs by institutes such as the Mozart Festival Würzburg, the HfM Weimar and the Villa De Pisa in Olevano Romano and was a guest speaker at the 2021 Bavarian Digital Summit (Bayerische Digitalgipfel).
