Jeremy Summerly
Jeremy Summerly was educated as a chorister at Lichfield Cathedral, at Winchester College, and at Oxford University from where he graduated with First Class Honours in Music. While in Oxford he was a choral scholar at New College and after graduating he worked as a Studio Manager for BBC Radio, founded the Oxford Camerata, and undertook musicological research at King’s College, London. In 1989 he became a lecturer in the department of Academic Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and in the following year he was appointed conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford. He has also acted as guest conductor for the New London Chamber Choir, The Cardinall’s Musick, the Rundfunkchor, Berlin, and the Tallis Chamber Choir. Since 1991 he has conducted over forty recordings spanning the music of nine centuries and as a writer he has contributed articles to Early Music, The Musical Times, Choir & Organ, Leading Notes, and Classic CD. In 1996 he became Head of Academic Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and in 1999 he was also appointed Head of Undergraduate Programmes.
Jeremy has given concert tours throughout Europe and the United States as well as in Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Botswana, Israel and Palestine. He has conducted at the BBC Proms, at the Aldeburgh, Exeter, Ryedale, South Kesteven, Docklands and Kumamoto Festivals, and at the ‘Tage Alter Musik’ in Regensburg. He has conducted world premieres of music by John Tavener, Viktor Ekimovsky, Dimitri Smirnov, Joel Eriksson, Ruth Byrchmore, Mark Edgeley-Smith, Nicholas O’Neill, and Antony Pitts, UK premieres of music by Franco Donatoni and Maciej Zielinski, and the London premiere of I am the true vine by Arvo Pärt. As well as working with choirs, he founded the Oxford Camerata Instrumental Ensemble in 1992 and the Royal Academy Consort in 2002; he has also conducted the Northern Chamber Orchestra in Manchester, the Ensemble Ste Geneviève in Paris, the Britten Sinfonia in Oxford, and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. In 1995 he was a recipient of a European Cultural Prize from the European Association for the Encouragement of the Arts (Basel, Switzerland) and in 1997 he was made an honorary associate of the Royal Academy of Music. As a liturgical musician he sang for over a decade (1987–98) at St Margaret’s, Westminster and has conducted the liturgical choirs at many other London churches; from January 1999 until June 2002 he was Director of Music at Christ Church, Chelsea. As a BBC Radio 3 writer and presenter he has made programmes in locations all around the UK as well as in Belgium, France, Holland, Iceland, Israel and the USA. He has published four volumes for Faber Music: ‘Gaudete!—Medieval Songs and Carols for upper voices’, ‘Passetime with good company—Medieval Songs and Carols for mixed voices’, ‘Fair Oriana—Madrigals in celebration of Elizabeth I’, and ‘Thomas Tallis—English Sacred Music’. Since January 2003 he has been a regular reviewer and commentator for BBC Radio 4’s daily arts programme Front Row and in May 2005 he even contributed to BBC Radio 2’s series Living in Harmony.
Jeremy owes a huge debt of gratitude to the hundreds of people who have helped him to realize his musical and liturgical dreams at Edington over a quarter of a century, and in particular to his really rather distinguished friends John Harper, John Barnard, Peter Wright, Geoffrey Webber, David Trendell, Andrew Carwood, Robert Quinney, Peter Barley, Paul Brough, Julian Thomas, and, of course, the late Peter McCrystal and David Calcutt. As well as to Antonia Southern—to her, perhaps, most of all.