Elliot Vaughan is a composer, performer, and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand). His output includes exploratory concert music, composed theatre, pop songs, performance art, and contributions to collaborative projects. He is the 2024 CNZ/NZSM Composer-in-Residence.
For fifteen years he lived in Vancouver, where he completed a BFA at SFU School for the Contemporary Arts and made his living freelancing. His career there extended from music for theatre (arranging Corey Payette's Children of God and Les filles du roi; scores for Leaky Heaven, Robin Leveroos/Macromatter, elysse cheadle) to pop music (Jay Malinowski, Dom Fricot, David Ward and dozens more) to music for dance (Rob Kitsos, Julie Lebel/Foolish Operations, Desirée Dunbar/Dezza Dance, Iris Wing Chi Lau and others) and contemporary classical composition (Plastic Acid Orchestra commissions, regular inclusion in Sonic Boom festival).
Returning to Aotearoa in 2018 to earn his MMus at Te Kōkī—New Zealand School of Music, Elliot has established himself as a key voice in exploratory composition and performance in New Zealand. His careful blurring of performance art and music led to
2024's Walking Scores project with Noel Meek;
2022's Sit, Sit tour of composed theatre and post-instrumental music with Antonia Barnett-McIntosh as Second Company;
2021's solo performance piece First Buzzard at the Body (first performed at Ōtautahi Tiny Fest) and the conceptual, ritualistic Futures Past (the dissolution of time by recomposing pop tunes linked to works of speculative fiction set in futures now passed, commissioned by Stroma);
2020's sweaty, messy Surreal Multiverse (a concert in collaboration with Tristan Carter and Arthur Street Loft Orchestra);
2019's evening-length Fish in Pink Gelatine (performed installations and staged concert at Adam Art Gallery and, later, BATS); NZDL2k11 Sports Day (public intervention of invented games on Cuba Street), and the absurd first instalment of What are the dead to us in out better fortune? (performative report on 'this day in history', Play_Station gallery);
2018's brooding, mysterious Fish in a Vivisection.
Alongside this work, Elliot continues to make functional music in collaborative projects. This includes film and theatre (Barbarian Productions, Elika Mojtabaei & Aryo Khakpour...); arrangements for pop projects (French for Rabbits, David Ward, Bedouin Soundclash, Moonlander...); and dance (Iris Wing Chi Lau, Threading Frames...).
Elliot is violist and a founding member of Moth Quartet, established to play music written by friends, to collaborate with other musicians and across disciplines, and to create improvised music for microphone and performance. He recently formed pop band Eigenface. Past projects include The End Tree, Second Company, iffy south, Swarm of Infants, and Jay Malinowski & The Deadcoast.
CNZ/NZSM Composer-in-Residence, 2024; Wellington Theatre Award (Most Original Production—First Buzzard at the Body, 2022); CANZ Trust Fund Award, 2021; Awards for Te Kōkī students, 2018/19: Body/Harris Performance Prize (1st=), Lilburn Composers Competition (2nd=), and Susan Rhind Award.
February 2024
150 words
Elliot Vaughan is a composer, performer, and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. His output includes exploratory concert music, composed theatre, pop songs, performance art, and contributions to collaborative projects. He is the 2024 CNZ/NZSM Composer-in-Residence.
For fifteen years he lived in Vancouver, where he completed a BFA at SFU School for the Contemporary Arts and made his living freelancing. His career there extended from arrangements for theatre and pop records to music for dance and contemporary classical composition.
Returning to Aotearoa in 2018 to earn his MMus at Te Kōkī—New Zealand School of Music, Elliot has established himself as a key voice in exploratory composition and performance here. His blurring of performance art and music has been recognised with awards and commissions, including for his shows First Buzzard at the Body (2021) and Fish in Pink Gelatine (2019).
Elliot is violist with the Moth Quartet, and recently formed pop band Eigenface.
February 2024
50 words
Elliot Vaughan is a composer-performer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. He is the 2024 CNZ/NZSM Composer-in-Residence. He makes exploratory concerts, composed theatre, pop songs, performance art, and contributes to collaborative projects. He holds composition degrees from SFU (Vancouver) and Te Kōkī—NZSM. He plays with Moth Quartet and Eigenface.
February 2024