Stewart enjoys a diverse career as entrepreneur, pianist, teacher and broadcaster.
He is the founder and artistic director of Music by the Springs, which since 2018 has quickly become regarded as one of Australia’s finest chamber music festivals. In the same year he opened House of Pianos which is a hub for piano sales, music lessons and concerts and masterclasses.
As a performer, he works as a soloist and collaborator with many of Australia’s leading instrumentalists and singers at leading concert venues and festivals around the country. He has performed in many leading Australian venues, at Festivals in Tasmania, Hepburn Springs, Mackay, Townsville, Brisbane and Coramba and internationally in New Zealand, China, Italy and the USA.
His 2022 season includes guest directing the first Renaissance Tours Festival of Chamber Music in April, the fifth Music by the Springs, recitals at Tempo Rubato, a seventh year of Stewart Kelly and Friends at the Melbourne Recital Centre, and the Mackay Chamber Music Festival.
As a teacher and associate artist, Stewart is a casual staff member at the Melbourne Conservatorium at Melbourne University and part-time faculty at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School.
Stewart is a graduate of the Queensland University of Technology, the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University and the Australian National Academy of Music. His principal teachers were Gillian Wills, Diane Selmon, Stephen Emmerson and Timothy Young. In recent years he has worked regularly with world renowned pianist and scholar Graham Johnson OBE.