Jeroen Speak received undergraduate training in New Zealand. With the aid of the William Georgetti and Herbert Sutcliffe scholarships he was able to complete a masters degree at Victoria University where he graduated in 1993. In 1994 he was the Composer in Residence at the Nelson School of Music before immigrating to Britain where he completed a D Phil at Sussex University under Michael Finnissy in 2003. He has also received tuition from Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Jonathan Harvey.
Speak has been recently featured at the Huddersfield Festival (UK), ISCM World Music Days, the Gaudeamus, and the Asian Composers League Festivals, Darmstadt, and many other European and international music festivals. His work Arabesques for violin and piano was shortlisted in 2002 by the SPNM, and subsequently taken up and performed by the acclaimed contemporary ensemble Lontano, (Caroline Balding and Dominic Saunders) in the Purcell Room (Southbank, London) and broadcast on BBC's 'Here and Now'. His related work Tarantelle (for solo cello) was premiered by Arne De force at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival the following year.
In 2004 Speak was awarded a Fellowship by the British Council to work in Taiwan where he lectured, and organised workshops and performances of British music, this was the basis for an ongoing collaboration with the Taiwan-based 'Forum Music', a collaboration involving both educational and cultural elements which will take on new momentum next year with the involvement of Ensemble Bash (the UK-based percussion ensemble).
In 2005 Speak was offered a further fellowship to work and research in Shanghai (China). His current compositional interests include new approaches to contemporary notation, instrumentation, and tonality. His research in China revolved around modern and classical aspects Chinese culture and aesthetics, including ancient Chinese music notation systems, aiming towards the creation of a body of new work. To that end, In 2006 he was commissioned by the ISCM ensemble in residence Ensemble Antipodes to write an octet (Silk Dialogue V) which was premiered at the ISCM World Music Days Stuttgart (2006), his work The Character of Time was premiered in the same year at Darmstadt by Nicolas Hodges, and his percussion work GuTa was premiered in Taiwan by the Forum Music Ensemble. In 2008 his piano trio, Lingua e Realidade written for the UK-based group Lontano was premiered in April in the Purcell Room. In August 2009 his work Silk Dialogue VI for mixed ensemble, was premiered by ELISION Ensemble (Australia) in Melbourne and broadcast the ABC Classic FM.