Jessica Summers - Soprano
Jessica Summers studied at King's College (London), Birmingham Conservatoire and The Knack (ENO).
Opera roles include: Kitchen Boy in Dvorák’s Rusalka (English Touring Opera); Miranda in McNeff’s The Gentle Giant (ROH2/Linbury Studio); Papagena in The (Little) Magic Flute (English Touring Opera); Mustardseed in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (English Touring Opera); Barbarina in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Surrey Opera); La Sirena in Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero (St John Smith’s Square); Narrator in The Selfish Giant (Opera North Education); Inez in Die Drei Pintos (Opera South); Cis in Britten’s Albert Herring (British Youth Opera) and Hot Box Girl in Guys and Dolls with Pimlico Opera/inmates of Wandsworth Prison.
Jessica has also worked in the ensemble for English Touring Opera in their extensive national tours of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Donizetti’s Mary Queen of Scots.
Jessica has performed in a wide range of concerts including the Young Artists Recital Series at the Blackheath Halls, Asylum Monologues with Juliet Stevenson at the National Portrait Gallery and Young Vic, Triptych in the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum and several concerts with early music ensemble Mediva. She has given many recitals, performing mainly lieder and twentieth century repertoire.
Jessica studied contemporary performance on the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Aldeburgh, directed by Oliver Knussen. She has also sung in several masterclasses with Jane Manning and in 2010 participated in workshops with Annabel Arden/Complicite on the music/theatre of Georges Aperghis. New music performances include Birtwistle’s Ring A Dumb Carillon, Berio’s Laborintus II (soloist 1), Richard Causton’s Poems Almost of this World, George Benjamin’s A Mind of Winter, Michael Finnissy’s Beuk O’Neucassel Sangs and performances at the Brighton, Colourscape, Hoxton, King’s Lynn and York Late Music Festivals.
Her oratorio experience as a soloist includes Fauré's Requiem, Dvorák’s Te Deum & Mass in D, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, Mozart’s Missa Brevis K.275 & Exsultate Jubilate, Schubert’s Mass in G, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Bach’s St John Passion and Carrissimi’s Jephte.
Community music and music education are very important to Jessica. She has led and sung in many schools’ and community projects for Opera North, English Touring Opera and the Royal Opera (including Orlando Gough's On the Rim of the World at the ROH), as well as being a vocal animateur for projects with orchestras, music services, disability and mental health organisations. In 2006, she devised and implemented a creative arts programme for rural schools in Belize on behalf of the Belize Ministry of Education. She has her own private teaching practice in Cambridge (since 2006) where she also teaches at The Perse School. Other current education work includes Young Music Makers, Camden and Streetwise Opera.
Future engagements include recitals in London and Oxford.