Stephen Cleobury

Stephen Cleobury spent decades as music director of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where his leadership left a deep artistic imprint on the historic ensemble. He promoted new music far more vigorously than most figures rooted in the English choral heritage. Born on December 31, 1948, in Bromley, Kent, in southeast England, he grew up with a younger brother, Nicholas Cleobury, who later pursued the same profession. Cleobury, whose name is pronounced “CLOW-bury” with the opening syllable sounding like “how,” first sang as a boy soprano at Worcester Cathedral. He later studied organ and choral music at St. John’s College, Cambridge, under David Willcocks and George Guest as an organ scholar. His initial appointment came as sub-organist at Westminster Abbey. In 1976 he directed Malcolm Williamson’s The Lion of Suffolk at a memorial service for Benjamin Britten, an early sign of his ongoing interest in contemporary scores. During the 1970s he also taught at Northampton Grammar School and served St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton. In 1979 he advanced to master of music at Westminster Cathedral.

Cleobury joined King’s College in 1982, taking charge of both the music program and its centuries-old choir. To wider audiences the ensemble is chiefly recognized for its yearly Festival of Lessons and Carols, broadcast worldwide during the Christmas season; Cleobury refreshed the tradition by commissioning a fresh composition for the service each year. He assumed leadership of the Cambridge University Musical Society in 1983, enabling him to direct large-scale choral-orchestral pieces. One such project was Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Sorcerer’s Mirror, written for the group in 2009 to mark the university’s 800th anniversary while addressing the dangers of climate change. From 1995 to 2007 he served as director of the BBC Singers and afterward remained affiliated as conductor laureate.

Under his direction the Choir of King’s College recorded for numerous labels, with Cleobury appearing both as organist and choral conductor; in the 2010s the choir issued several releases on its own imprint, including a 2019 account of Herbert Howells’s An English Mass. Cleobury stepped down in September 2019 after an extended struggle with cancer and died in York on November 22 of that year. His legacy endures through the numerous choral arrangements he prepared, still performed at King’s and by ensembles worldwide.