Guest Conductor

voice 2025: GUEST CONDUCTOR

Competitors will have the opportunity to perform alongside the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) for the Semifinal and Final rounds. For the occasion, the official orchestra of the CMIM will be under the direction of Guest Conductor Patrick Summers.

Patrick Summers conducts a wide range of repertoire from Baroque to bel canto to German Romantic music and is a leading proponent of contemporary American opera. He has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dallas Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Rome Opera, Welsh National Opera, Norwegian Opera, the Bregenz Festival, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Opéra National de Bordeaux, Opéra national du Rhin, and Opera Australia.  

Summers is the Artistic and Music Director of the Houston Grand Opera, having been first appointed Music Director in 1998, with the position of Artistic Director added to his responsibilities in 2011. Summers was named Co-Director of Aspen Music School’s redesigned opera program, Aspen Opera Theater and Vocal Arts, alongside Renée Fleming in 2019, after years of appearing at the festival in symphonic concert settings as well as opera. 

Highlights of his work with the HGO include conducting the complete cycle of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and collaborating on more than a dozen world premieres, including Joel Thompson’s The Snowy Day, Tarik O’Regan’s The Phoenix, André Previn’s Brief Encounter, Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life, The End of the Affair, and Three Decembers, and Tod Machover’s Resurrection. He has shepherded the careers of many important singers for several generations. Next season at HGO he conducts new productions of Il Trovatore and Breaking the Waves. 

Summers served as Principal Guest Conductor of the San Francisco Opera from 2009-2016 and was honoured in 2015 with the San Francisco Opera Medal. Recently he conducted Jake Heggie/Terrence McNally’s Dead Man Walking with the Israeli Opera and conducted several all-star casts in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvrer at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. 

Summers has fostered and given more than twenty world premieres, collaborating with many of today’s most prominent composers. He has conducted multiple recordings of new American operas, including Dead Man Walking (recorded twice, in its World Premiere in San Francisco with Susan Graham and in Houston a decade later with Joyce DiDonato), A Streetcar Named Desire, Florencia en el Amazonas (recorded twice, with Patricia Schumann and Ana Maria Martinez), Little Women, Cold Sassy Tree, and Resurrection, among others.  

A gifted author, Summers latest book – The Spirit of This Place – was published by the University of Chicago Press. His articles in Houston Grand Opera programs on a wide range of topics in the arts and education have become collectibles. This year, he will release two novels and a volume of poetry, with more to come.