Stephen Cleobury is associated with two of Britain’s most famous choirs. As Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge and Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers, he also works with leading symphony orchestras and period instrument ensembles. He ranges across a broad repertoire, from Gregorian chant to newly composed works. He has particularly championed contemporary music and at King’s has commissioned a carol annually for A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, thereby refreshing this great tradition of Christmas music with compositions from the foremost composers of our own day. In March 2005, he instigated the first Easter Festival of Music at King’s, at which he conducted concerts with the Chapel Choir and the Academy of Ancient Music, which were broadcast by the BBC. He has premièred many works with the BBC Singers, notably Giles Swayne Havoc at the Royal Albert Hall at the Proms, and Edward Cowie Gaia, both with the Endymion Ensemble. In 2004, also at the Proms, he gave the British première of Harrison Birtwistle Ring Dance of the Nazarene with the same forces. Earlier this season he premièred Errollyn Wallen Our English Heart in Portsmouth with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Singers as part of the Nelson celebrations.

As Conductor of the orchestra and chorus of the Cambridge University Music Society, Stephen has directed the major works for chorus and orchestra as well as symphonic repertoire and has also premièred new works, among them pieces by Alexander Goehr, Robin Holloway and Robert Saxton. Recent CUMS performances have included Mahler Resurrection Symphony in Boston, Berlioz Requiem in Ely Cathedral, Dvorak Stabat Mater in King’s Chapel, Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, and Tippett A Child of Our Time and Verdi Requiem, also in King's Chapel.

He frequently appears in this country and abroad as a conductor, leader of conducting workshops and solo organist. As a conductor he has worked with many ensembles, including the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic, Southbank Sinfonia, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Endymion and His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts. Of late, performances as an organ recitalist have taken him to venues as diverse as Hong Kong, Haderslev Cathedral in Denmark and Salt Lake's huge LDS Conference Center, where he played to an audience of several thousand people. Other engagements have seen him directing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City, recording with the BBC Singers a CD of Tippett’s choral music to mark the composer’s centenary, and conducting the Israel Camerata in a series of concerts in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem: giving a series of conducting master-classes in Mexico: conducting the National Chamber Choir of Ireland during their summer series in Dublin: taking the CUMS to Switzerland, and the BBC Singers to Japan, where he also gave a lecture on the music of Benjamin Britten at the International Choral Symposium in Kyoto.