Free-lance Australian composer, conductor, musician and educator, Stephen Leek, has had long associations with some of the most innovative choirs around the world and through his own choirs, vOiCeArT and acclaimed The Australian Voices, that he co-founded and conducted until 2009. His original music has its own distinctive contemporary voice and is performed regularly throughout the world by leading choirs and championed by the most innovative conductors.

Although having written operas, orchestral and chamber works, music for education and dance, Leek is often credited as the “founder of Australian choral music” through his commitment to Australian choral music over the past four decades and through composition of over 700 choral works for every age and type of choir that explore unique Australian colours and textures using Australian words and themes.

Stephen Leek also has a great belief in furthering choral music around the world and has held national and international positions including Vice President of the International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM) from 2011 – 2017, Founding Artistic Director of the Shanghai Youth Choir 2012/13, and in 2015, Conductor of the Asia Pacific Youth Choir. A Churchill Fellow, Leek has also received numerous national and international awards including the prestigious “Robert Edler International Choral Prize” officially presented to him in Darmstadt, Germany in 2004.

Leek continues to freelance as a conductor and composer, but now resides in Canberra and is currently Artistic Director of the Young Music Society – an awarded, self-funded, non-profit, community-based organisation that operates quality music programs for young people. He currently also lectures in Composition at the Australian National University School of Music and Choral Direction at the Melbourne University school of Music. In his free time Leek enjoys other artistic pursuits including painting, collecting antiques and the repurposing of beautiful objects.