Jeremy Summerly

British choral conductor Jeremy Summerly established the Oxford Camerata in 1984 and has since overseen numerous recordings with that ensemble. He also serves as director of the Choir of St. Luke's in Chelsea while maintaining parallel careers as a musicologist, radio presenter, and educator.

Born on February 28, 1961, Summerly completed his secondary education at Lichfield Cathedral School and Winchester College before proceeding to New College Oxford. While still an undergraduate there, he took the helm of both the New College Chamber Orchestra and the Oxford Chamber Choir. After receiving an honors degree in 1982, he joined the BBC as a studio manager and simultaneously pursued historical musicology research at King's College London. Listeners have encountered him regularly on the BBC 3 and BBC 4 networks since 1991, where he works as a presenter and reviewer. Summerly assumed leadership of the choir at the Edington Music Festival in 1983; one year later he founded the Oxford Camerata, remaining its director into the mid-2020s. The first of many Naxos releases appeared in 1991 with the album Lamentations, after which the group maintained a prolific schedule that frequently yielded several discs annually. Its repertory centers on Renaissance music yet stretches from Machaut and Hildegard of Bingen through Fauré to works of the present day.

Between 1990 and 1996 Summerly also directed the Oxford Schola Cantorum. In 2010 he was appointed director of music at St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, in London, and from 2015 to 2019 he held the same post at St. Peter's College, Oxford. He has taught at both Gresham College in London and the Royal Academy of Music, where he holds honorary membership. In addition, he has prepared several editions of printed music and contributed articles to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music as well as other major reference publications. He continues to lead the Choir of St. Luke's, Chelsea, which released a 2024 Naxos recording devoted to contemporary composer Philip W.J. Stopford. By the mid-2020s his discography encompassed roughly fifty titles.