PUBLIC LECTURE GIVEN BY JEREMY SUMMERLY, AS PART OF THE TWENTIENTH ANNUAL WILLIAM BYRD FESTIVAL

Jeremy Summerly is a conductor, writer, and broadcaster. He founded Oxford Camerata in 1984, conducted Schola Cantorum of Oxford from 1990-1996, is Co-Artistic Director of Oxford Baroque, and Director of Music at St Luke’s, Chelsea. He has conducted over fifty original commercial recordings of music spanning a thousand years, and has worked as music producer on a similar number with groups such as the Choir of Westminster Abbey, I Faggiolini, Fiori Musicali, and the choirs of New College, Oxford and Christ Church, Oxford. He has worked with local choirs and orchestras in locations as far afield as Melbourne, Cape Town, Tokyo, Helsinki, and San Francisco, and has conducted Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin across the River Jordan,with one choir in Jordan and the other in Israel. He is a reviewer for BBC Radio 3’s CD Review and a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. He has written articles for the Cambridge History of Musical Performance and for the upcoming Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music. He has conducted Ligeti for Ligeti, Tavener for Tavener, and Pärt for Pärt, and he is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, where he has variously been Head of Academic Studies, Head of Undergraduate Programmes, and Sterndale Bennett Visiting Lecturer in Music. He is Director of Music at St Peter’s College, Oxford and Artistic Director of the Mayfield Festival of Music and the Arts. In the fall he will become a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music.