Grace Davidson, Choir of St Lukes, Chelsea, Chelsea Camerata, Rupert Jeffcoat & Jeremy Summerly
Biography Grace Davidson, Choir of St Lukes, Chelsea, Chelsea Camerata, Rupert Jeffcoat & Jeremy Summerly
Grace Davidson
is a British soprano who specialises first and foremost in the performance and recording of Baroque music.
Grace grew up in a house whose hallway was entirely filled by a grand piano which was being stored for a friend of the family – music was physically unavoidable. She learned the piano and the violin but it was singing that she loved best. Taken to ‘Cats’ when she was three years old she sang along throughout or, rather, whenever her mother’s hand wasn’t clamped over her mouth. And it was her singing that won her a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where she won the Early Music prize and gained her degree and postgraduate. In 2016 Grace was appointed an Associate of The Royal Academy Of Music.
Since then she has worked as a soloist with leading Baroque ensembles, under the batons of Sir John Eliot Gardner, Paul McCreesh, Philippe Herreweghe and Harry Christophers.
Her discography includes a decade of recordings with The Sixteen, many of which feature her as soloist – Handel’s Jeptha (as Angel), Dixit Dominus, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, Pianto della Madonna, Acis and Galatea (as Galatea) and the Lutheran Masses of Bach. On Radio Three’s ‘Building a Library’, her singing in Fauré’s Requiem (with the London Symphony Orchestra and Tenebrae, Nigel Short conducting) was reviewed by Richard Morrison quite simply: “Grace Davidson’s Pie Jesu is matchless”.
Grace’s purity of tone has attracted many of the leading contemporary composers to write for her, most notably Max Richter, who chose her as the solo singer for many of his works, such as Sleep. This piece – lasting all night – has now been performed all over the world, including a performance in 2019 on the Great Wall of China.
Recent solo recordings for Signum Records are Vivaldi & Handel, a disc of sacred solo cantatas with the Academy of Ancient Music and John Dowland: First Booke of Songes Or Ayres with lutenist David Miller.
Jeremy Summerly
is a British conductor. He was educated at Lichfield Cathedral School, Winchester College, and New College, Oxford. While at Oxford he conducted the New College Chamber Orchestra and the Oxford Chamber Choir. After graduating with a first-class honours degree in Music in 1982, he started work as a Studio Manager for BBC Radio, while pursuing postgraduate research in historical musicology at King's College London. Since 1991 he has been a presenter and reviewer for BBC's Radios 3 and 4, in particular for Radio 4's Front Row, and Radio 3's Record Review (formerly CD Review).
Since 1983 he has been conductor of the mixed-voice consort at the Edington Music Festival, and in 2012 he was appointed Artistic Director of Mayfield Festival of Music and the Arts, where he is also conductor of Mayfield Festival Choir.
He founded Oxford Camerata in 1984. In 1989, he was appointed lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, where he was Head of Academic Studies from 1996 to 2007, and thereafter Head of Continuing Professional Development. He was conductor of Schola Cantorum of Oxford from 1990 to 1996. He was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in 2006, and in 2015 he became their Sterndale Bennett Visiting Lecturer in Music.
In 2010, he was appointed Director of Music at St Luke's Church, Chelsea. He conducted the choir of The Queen's College, Oxford for the 2013–14 academic year, and was Director of Music at St Peter's College, Oxford from 2015 to 2019. In 2017, he was made a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and he has been Visiting Professor of Music History at Gresham College since 2019.
