The artist

From songwriting to conducting

As a high-school student, Ken wrote poems and set them to music. Before he was directing an ensemble, he was finding out what a line of words could do when sung.

His studies took him from Indonesia to the Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music in the Philippines, where he earned his undergraduate degree in church music. At California Baptist University in the United States he focused on the ensemble itself, completing a master’s degree in choral conducting.

A community in Medan

After returning to Indonesia, Ken established the Medan Community Male Choir in 2015. Its festival appearances and cultural exchanges have taken the singers to cities in Indonesia and further afield, including Singapore, Macau, and destinations in Taiwan.

The Ken Steven International Choral Festival brought that work closer to home. Its first edition in 2019 welcomed singers from Bandung. At the fourth edition in 2024, Jakarta Youth Choir shared the opening programme with local ensembles at the Methodist Charles Wesley Recital Hall.

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Writing for different voices

In Hentakan Jiwa, Malay dance vocabulary gives the choir both its text and a vocabulary of movement. Alusi Au begins with a different musical inheritance, a Batak song whose speaker waits for an answer. One is an original composition, the other an arrangement.

Ken also writes for the voices available in a school rehearsal room. His repertoire ranges from the two-part Petak Umpet to divided mixed-choir writing and arrangements for treble ensembles.

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Teaching and adjudication

In Medan, Ken serves as Director of Studies at SMK Methodist Charles Wesley Music Vocational School. Alongside his teaching, he has served on international choral juries, including the World Choir Games in New Zealand. He earned his doctorate in music education at Universitas Negeri Semarang in 2025.