Our conductor

Vaughan Townhill

Southside Community Orchestra rehearsal, Southside Community Centre, Edinburgh, November 11, 2019.

Vaughan is a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where he was a prize-winner for clarinet. He was a chorister at Peterborough Cathedral as a boy, and Bass Lay Clerk at St Mary’s Cathedral while a student at the RSAMD. For 35 years he was Director of Music at Cargilfield School in Edinburgh and retired in December 2008.  

Vaughan is a founder committee member of Scottish Schools Orchestra Trust, an organisation promoting orchestral playing for young people. He is principal clarinet of the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra, a member of Doune Wind Quintet and soloist with other orchestral ensembles. As a soloist he has performed concertos with Scottish Sinfonia, Philomusic, the East Lothian Players and Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra.

He has conducted Opera Camerata, the Edinburgh Players and with his school choir performed some of the great Choral works, including The Christmas Oratorio, The Messiah and Vivaldi’s Gloria. He is the conductor of Dunbar and District Choral Society; in 2010 they performed Brahms German Requiem and in May 2011 they performed Messiah.