Stephen graduated from the University of Cambridge, UK, in June 2008 with a BA in Music. Stephen is also a pianist, having achieved a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (LRSM) in Piano Performance in December 2004. Stephen has written scores to several short films, some of which have been shown at film festivals, including one that was shown at the Rushes Soho Shorts festival in London.

In 2002, Stephen was the first winner of the UK competition ‘Cathcart Spring Prom Young Composer of the Year’ for composers aged 11-18, with his piece for symphony orchestra, ‘Jubilee Celebration’. The piece was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by David Arnold.

In addition to writing orchestral and ensemble music, Stephen also writes electronic music. In 2007, Stephen wrote a short electronic track entitled ‘Let’s Move’ for the Microsoft ‘Xbox Soundtracks’ competition, where he had to write music for an Xbox video game trailer. Stephen's track was one of the Top 10 tracks selected from UK submissions that went forward to a world-wide public vote on the Xbox website.

Stephen studied ‘Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television’ at the University of Southern California, graduating in May 2009, during which time he studied under working industry professionals. These people included the composers Christopher Young, Joel McNeely, Jack Smalley, and Blake Neely, as well as orchestrators Brad Dechter and Pete Anthony, and Variety Magazine columnist and journalist Jon Burlingame. Stephen has also had the privilege of meeting and working with sound engineers Dennis Sands and Bobby Fernandez on the course scoring sessions, as well as the opportunity to meet such film composers as Harry Gregson-Williams, Alan Silvestri, Ed Shearmur, Teddy Shapiro, Bear McCreary and directors such as Stephen Sommers.

During his tenure at USC, Stephen scored a plethora of short films and video game projects, one of which included the video game 'Kid The World Saver', which was a finalist at the 2009 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase and was presented at the Game Developers Conference in March 2009.