Stephen Montague has been a freelance composer based in London since 1974. In addition to his active career as an international composer of orchestral, chamber, dance and electro-acoustic music, he also has a keen interest in a wide variety of educational projects.

Recent activities include a new commission for the 50th anniversary of London's Royal Festival Hall organ, organising and directing John Cage's Musicircus for 51 ensembles and 347 performers at the Barbican Centre during the BBC Symphony Orchestra's John Cage UnCaged Weekend. Also he composed a large, multimedia work for Bath Abbey involving 167 performers from the local community, a professional special lighting effects team, a video artist and a surround sound speaker system.

His large-scale orchestral/choral work, Dark Sun – August 1945, a commission by Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs (COMA), is frequently performed as part of an on going community educational project scheme. The work is written in ‘open instrumentation’, which means it is designed to be performed by a wide variety of standard and non standard instruments (and voices) by any large number of amateur performers from Grade 3 to professionals.

On a smaller scale his ensemble, Montague/Mead Piano Plus (piano with live electronics), does a variety of educational projects in addition to formal concert performances. Recently in Budapest for a festival of British music sponsored by the British Council, the residency involved a two day composition workshop open to the general public. The project was designed to give the participants, some with no prior background in music, the opportunity to help create a musical composition and the experience of performing it with a large ensemble. Each person was given simple percussion instruments and the opportunity to treat some of the sounds with live electronics. The work was created and rehearsed on the first day and performed the following day as a prelude to the Montague/Mead evening concert in the main concert hall.

Montague is currently Composer in Residence at Trinity College of Music, London, a Director of the spnm (the Society for the Promotion of New Music) and the 1998-98 Artistic Director. He is also the Chair of the Repertoire Committee for COMA (UK).