Jeffrey Skidmore

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Jeffrey Skidmore
Jeffrey Skidmore, photographed by Adrian Burrows
Background information
Birth name	Jeffrey Skidmore
Born	1951 Birmingham, West Midlands, England
Genre(s)	Classical
Occupation(s)	Conductor; musicologist
Label(s)	Ex Cathedra; ASV Records; Hyperion Records
Associated acts	Ex Cathedra
Website	www.ex-cathedra.org/jeffreyskidmore.php

Jeffrey Skidmore, born in 1951 in Birmingham, England, is the conductor and artistic director of Ex Cathedra, the flagship early music ensemble for Birmingham and the West Midlands. An active participant in musical education and a pioneer in researching and performing neglected choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries, he has worked with leading musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French and Italian music. In particular, his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra have won wide acclaim.

1 Education and current activities
2 Contributions to musicology and musical education
3 Notes
4 References
5 Further reading
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Education and current activities

Skidmore began conducting while still at school, and was only 18 years old when he founded the Ex Cathedra choir in Birmingham in 1969. He went on to read music with David Wulstan at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he was a choral scholar under Bernard Rose.^[1]

Directing the Ex Cathedra choir and its associated Ex Cathedra Consort and Baroque Orchestra, Skidmore has appeared in concert series and festivals across the UK and abroad, and has made a number of highly-acclaimed recordings. In addition, he regularly conducts other ensembles such as the BBC Singers, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Hanover Band and the Northern Sinfonia. He has commissioned more than ten new works and conducted many world premières by well-established and new composers, including Fyfe Hutchins, Gabriel Jackson, John Joubert, Daryl Runswick, Peter Sculthorpe, Philip Sheppard, Peter Wiegold and Roderick Williams.

Jeffrey Skidmore with some of Ex Cathedra's singers, photographed by Adrian Burrows.

In the field of opera Skidmore worked with Marc Minkowski and David McVicker on the 2004 production of Eccles' Semele at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris; and conducted Cavalli's La Calisto, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and Rameau's Pigmalion at the UCE Birmingham Conservatoire. With Ex Cathedra he gave the first performances in modern times of the French Baroque operas Zaïde, reine de Grenade (Zaïde, Queen of Grenada) by Royer and Isis by Lully.^[2]^[3]

[edit] Contributions to musicology and musical education

Skidmore is a pioneer in the field of research and performance of neglected choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries, and, in particular, has won wide acclaim for his recordings of French and Latin American Baroque music with Ex Cathedra for Hyperion Records. An Honorary Fellow at the UCE Birmingham Conservatoire and a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, he has worked with many leading musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French and Italian music by Giovanni Animuccia, Juan de Araujo, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, Claudio Monteverdi and Jean-Philippe Rameau.^[1]

Active in music education, Skidmore is Artistic Director of Early Music and the Capelle Baroque Orchestra of the UCE Birmingham Conservatoire, and director of Ex Cathedra's wide-reaching education programme. He frequently gives choral training workshops and teaches at summer schools in the UK and overseas. He has regularly directed the choral programme at Dartington International Summer School and was Classical Music Programmer for the 2005 Kilkenny Festival.^[2]^[3]