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Stephen Taberner is a singer, songwriter, double bass player, composer and choir leader based in Melbourne - most notorious as the musical director of the Spooky Men‘s Chorale.


Stephen was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1961 where he explored the dual realms of part singing and existential angst at his parent’s Christadelphian Church and, at 21, he took up the double bass and began playing in local jazz bands. Two years in London which were largely spent at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club was followed by a move to Sydney to study at the Conservatorium jazz school in 1989. Stephen played with various Sydney jazz artists before his musical career took an unexpected turn when he joined world music singing group Voices from the Vacant Lot in 1991.


As well as traveling to festivals and learning songs from Bulgarians, Georgians, South Africans and Tanzanians, he discovered a love for teaching singing which led to the establishment of his first community choir in 1993.In 1996 and 1998 Stephen was co-director of the Choral Sea, a singing event at Sydney’s Town Hall with over 700 participants and he became a highly sought choir and workshop leader, facilitating workshops throughout Australasia.


He worked as musician for Sydney Playback Theatre from 1995 to 2000, and also with an East Timorese cultural group in Cabramatta over a similar period. These two experiences led to him composing the music for the NZ made documentary Punitive Damage, the soundtrack of which was nominated for a Nokia NZ film award in 1999.


In 2000, his career took a sudden new direction when he successfully unblocked himself and began writing songs. He presented his debut concert “This was nearly my life” at Eastside Parish in 2001, and spent much of 2002 recording his first solo CD “Burning Slow” at BJB studios in Surry Hills.


A spell in the Blue Mountains resulted in the formation of the Spooky Men’s Chorale, a long held dream of Stephen’s to create a boofy, highly tuneful and gratuitously foolish male singing ensemble.


2004 saw a move to Melbourne to take up a position as musical director of the Millennium Chorus, an annual singing event at the Concert Hall with a


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