Steve Lehman earned an undergraduate degree and, from 2000 to 2002, a master’s degree in composition at Wesleyan University, where he studied with Anthony Braxton, Jay Hoggard, and Alvin Lucier. At the same time, he took lessons from Jackie McLean at the Hartt School. In 2012, he received a doctorate with distinction in musical composition from Columbia University under the direction of Tristan Murail, George Lewis, Fabien Lévy, and Fred Lerdahl. The Fulbright Program allowed him to move to France for the academic year 2002-2003, during which time he undertook research on the reception of experimental Afro-American composers working in France in the 1970s. He was awarded the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2014 and a Guggenheim fellowship in 2015.

As an alto saxophonist, Lehman has worked in jazz and avant-garde music. The scope of his musical influences has allowed him to build bridges between jazz, hip-hop, neo soul, Senegalese rap, and the most abstract electronic music. For example, he produced a rearrangement of a track by electronic music duo Autechre for the album The People I Love. His recent work in electronic music has focused on the development of computer-driven improvisation models based on the Max/MSP programming environment.

Lehman has played all around the world, accompanied by his own ensembles, as well as those directed by Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, Bennie Maupin, Jason Moran, Georgia-Anne Muldrow, George Lewis, Meshell Ndegeocello, and HPrizm from Antipop Consortium, among others.
His pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, So Percussion, the American Composers Orchestra, JACK Quartet, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the TALEA Ensemble.

Lehman is also a teacher. He has published articles and given conferences on a range of subjects, such as jazz pedagogy and rhythm cognition. His current work draws on the intersecting histories of spectral composition and jazz improvisation. He has taught undergraduate lessons at Wesleyan University, the Conservatoire de Paris, New School University, and Columbia University. He has given conferences at Amherst College, UC Berkeley, Berklee School of Music, Banff Centre, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and IRCAM, where he was a research fellow in 2011.

He is currently a professor of music at California Institute of the Arts and resides in Los Angeles.