Stephen Leek

Answer After 33 years freelancing as a composer and conductor, I’ve just started a new job as General Manager of the Young Music Society in Canberra – an organisation which was a huge influence on my musical development when I was young. I become involved as a teenager with singing, cello performance and composition – it was so inspiring. Similarly, my years with AYO and National Music Camps were such a formative time, particular a tour to Japan I was invited to participate in with a small group from AYO. In the past National Music Camp was full of not only the orchestras but chamber ensembles and choirs, we even had mass sing nights where the whole of the camp sight-read through major choral and orchestral works such as <i>The Messiah </i>– we were just immersed in everything musical and it is great to see that not much has changed.<br> <br> In my new role with the Young Music Society I’m relishing the opportunity to help young people connect with music-making from an early age and to be able to build musical skills, nurture ideas and get them excited by participating in music activities. I think it’s important for young people to put down their iPhones, pick up an instrument and be exposed to as many different types of music as possible in a practical way.

Answer I stumbled into it in Year 8. We were given a class exercise to write variations on a 4-bar melody. It was so interesting to suddenly step inside the sound and energy of music and let it spin – to just trust in the process and let it run, where one idea segues into another. I was onto my third page while the others were still on the first bar!

Answer Yes, when I started composing there weren’t many innovations taking place in Australian choral music. I sang with Judith Clingan’s choir as a teenager and we would sing arrangements of new Australian works all the time; today this is fairly common place but at the time I didn’t realise how unusual this was.<br> <br> For three years I worked as Composer Musician to the Tasmanian Dance Company which was a great opportunity to grow as a composer and as a musician and explore music in other artforms. In 1988 I was commissioned by Graeme Morton to compose a major acappella choral piece <i>Once on a Mountain</i> (texts by Douglas Stewart) for the St Peters Chorale high school choir. The piece evokes the natural riches and beauty of the Australian landscape and it won the Sounds Australian’s Critics Award for the Best Choral Work by an Australian composer. Since then I have composed hundreds of works, from short pieces for five-year-olds to epic works, about Australia with Australian themes, where we can sing about Sydney or the Blue Mountains instead of London Bridge or the Mississippi River.

Answer There are so many! Perhaps the most moving for me was in 2009 when I was conducting The Australian Voices in a concert in Los Angeles. At the end of the performance an elderly man shuffled up onto stage from the audience with tears in his eyes. The audience gasped! He hugged me and whispered in my ear that he’d been ‘waiting his whole life to hear a choir like this’. I discovered later that it was Paul Salamunovich, Conductor of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. That was a very special moment.<br> <br> I was also privileged to be AYO’s Composer-in-Residence in 1991-92 where I was able to bring Australian music to the fore at National Music Camp and to many other music camps throughout Australia. These initiatives are so important because we know that Australian music has no future without its composers!

Answer Never say no to opportunities. Learn how to really listen and really hear inside the music – listen with an open mind, listen intently, listen again and again. Get as much experience as you can in all the art forms, travel and stay attuned attention to your environment; all these things will help you to create your own voice.