Jeremy Summerly is head of Academic Studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. As well as a conductor and lecturer he is a writer/presenter for BBC Radio and an editor for Faber Music. He graduated from Oxford University with First Class Honours in Music and thereafter undertook musicological research at King’s College, London, while also working as a studio manager for BBC Radio. He founded the Oxford Camerata in 1984 and between 1990 and 1996 he was conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford. He has conducted over forty commercial recordings of music spanning nine centuries and he made his conducting début at the BBC Proms in 1999 and at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2005. He has given concert tours throughout Europe and the United States as well as in Israel, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, South Africa and Botswana. He has conducted Ligeti for Ligeti, Kagel for Kagel, and Pärt for Pärt.

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 2007 he was made an honorary associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London.