Alex Taylor
Alex Taylor (b. 1988) has been commissioned and performed by prominent artists in his native New Zealand and abroad, including Orchestra Wellington (NZ), Enso Quartet (US), Ensemble U (EE), Ensemble Proton Bern (CH), Susan Narucki (US), Justine Cormack (NZ), Steven Schick (US) and the Tanglewood Music Center (US). He has received a number of awards, including the 2012 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, the 2013 CANZ Trust Fund Award, and a 2016 New Zealand Arts Foundation New Generation Award. Past residencies include the NZSO National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, Caselberg Trust Creative Connections Artist-in-Residence, and Composition Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center. With collaborator Simon Ingram he was a co-finalist for the 2020 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for their work for orchestra and painting machine Assemblage.
Alex recently completed his Ph.D. in Composition at the University of California San Diego under the supervision of Lei Liang, and currently teaches Theory and Composition at Illinois State University. Previously he studied English Literature and Music at the University of Auckland, completing a Masters in Composition with First Class Honours under the supervision of Eve de Castro-Robinson and John Elmsly.
Alex’s compositional work often explores interactions between seemingly disparate materials, especially between old and new musics. His output includes works for orchestra, chamber music, music for theatre, and concertos for flute (with soloist Abigail Sperling) and bassoon (with soloist Ben Hoadley). He has also worked extensively with vocalists, having composed several substantial song cycles: Poema de La Siguiriya Gitana, Sea Gods, Dryad, and Agee Songs, as well as an opera, The Last Delirium of Arthur Rimbaud.
As well as composing, Alex is also a multi-instrumentalist, writer and music educator. He has written about music for the Pantograph Punch, Radio New Zealand, and Canzona, taught at Unitec, the University of Auckland, UC San Diego, and regularly gives pre-concert talks for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. He served for six years on the committee of CANZ, the Composers’ Association of New Zealand, and co-convened the Nelson Composers Workshop in 2014 and 2015. He was the artistic director of the Intrepid Music Project, and co-directed the performance group hear|say with Eve de Castro-Robinson. Alex has performed across a range of vocal and instrumental genres, including as lead vocalist for the Blackbird Ensemble, and as the Sorceress in his own recomposition of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Frances Moore’s Unstuck Opera.
Alex’s music has been recorded on the Rattle label, including releases by NZTrio (Lightbox, 2015), Sarah Watkins and Andrew Beer (11 Frames, 2019), and Henry Wong Doe (Perspectives, 2023), as well as his own solo releases Dryad (2023) and The First, the Fool (2015) on bandcamp.
