Vahan completed his BMus(Hons) degree in Classical Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2015, supported by The Worshipful Company of Skinners.

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His first major work outside of GSMD , the ‘Boys of Paradise’ operetta, received a British New Music Theatre Award nomination and its third revival at EGG London in October 2017. His next opera, ‘Goldilocks and the Three Little Pigs’, commissioned by The Opera Story company, premiered in February 2018 to rave reviews. Like “Boys of Paradise”, this production explored the immersive aspects of music theatre in unconventional spaces, a particular area of interest in his work.

 

 

In 2019, he was commissioned by Tete a Tete to write one of their

pop-up operas, 'Aliens in the Streets', performed outdoors

around the Kings Cross area as part of their summer festival.

 

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He collaborated as composer/musical director with award winning

performance artist Bryony Kimmings on the documentary ‘Opera Mums’-

a commission for BBC4 in partnership with ENO, which premiered in

September 2020.

He wrote three of the twelve  'Episodes'

released during lockdown by The Opera Story, which won the company

an RPS Inspiration Award last year.

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In April 2022, he was lead composer for The Opera Story’s multi-media retelling of ‘Beauty and the 7 Beasts’ (shortlisted for the Fedora Prize) and created a brand new orchestration of Kurt Weill's 'The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken' for the Guildhall School of Music of Drama in May. He was composer and musical director of ‘London's Turbulent Son’- a full length musical telling the story of Thomas Becket, patron saint of London. The show took place in The Guildhall Hall Yard in June 2022 as part of the Becket Pageant for London, the first Pageant in the City for over 500 years. Vahan has worked with Swedish writer/director Birgitta Liljedahl to score two of her short films, Tager Du (2022) and Potatis (2023), winner of Best Foreign Short 2024 at the Toronto Female Eye Film Festival.

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In January 2023, his large scale orchestral piece, Re-Emergence, commissioned by Hackney Music Service, premiered at the Hackney Empire in a performance including nearly 200 Hackney students. Commissioned by the renowned clarinettist Peter Cigleris, his Duo for Clarinet and Piano received its international premier at ClarinetFest in Dublin, July 2024. 

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Upcoming work includes a reimagining of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi for OperaUpClose, that will tour the UK in 2026 and a new song cycle in collaboration with writer Vanessa Oakes and the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, Songs for Survivors of the 21st Century, supported by the National Lottery

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A passionate music educator, Vahan has worked for the pioneering Every Child a Musician scheme in Newham, as composer-in-residence for the CYM outreach program in Norwich and is currently works with Hackney Music Service, HMDT Music and 

leads workshops with ETO.