Patrick Summers: A Life in Music

Patrick Summers is born in Washington, Indiana, the son and grandson of postmen.

His aunt Birdie teaches him to read music, and he begins piano lessons.

At age 13, he starts studying piano at Indiana University under revered professor Menahem Pressler. Also as a teenager, Patrick becomes director of his church choir and gets involved with his local community theater.

Indiana University's distinguished professor Margaret Harshaw, his mentor and voice teacher, sets the young high school student on the path to becoming a conductor." She says, “You play the piano like an orchestra. You think in terms of singers. You’re an opera conductor.”

Summers graduates from high school and enrolls in Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, graduating in 1985 with a degree in piano performance.

Summers earns a spot with San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, where he wins the Otto Guth Memorial Award for excellence in vocal coaching two years running. He also makes his professional conducting debut leading La bohème for SFO’s Western Opera Theater. 

He is named music director of SFO’s Western Opera Theater. He leads a tour to China, and the next year, returns to conduct the first production of Tosca ever produced on the Asian mainland in Mandarin, with all Chinese forces

Summers begins a five-year appointment as the first music director of SFO Center and, in 1990, makes his SFO mainstage debut conducting Die Fledermaus.

He sets off to pursue conducting engagements at houses around the world. He makes his European debut conducting Manon Lescaut with Rome Opera, as well as his debut with Opera Australia, conducting La Cenerentola.

• Summers makes his Metropolitan Opera debut conducting Die Fledermaus, beginning a longtime relationship with the company.

• With the Houston Symphony being phased out of performing with HGO, then-General Director David Gockley recruits Summers as the company’s music director, charged with developing the young HGO Orchestra into an ensemble that can compete with any other orchestra in the world.

• That same season, Summers makes his HGO debut conducting La traviata. During his decade-spanning career in Houston, he will conduct the opera three times, in productions starring Patricia Racette, Renée Fleming, and Albina Shagimuratova. He will also take the podium for Verdi’s Requiem; Don Carlo, in both the Italian and French versions; Rigoletto; A Masked Ball; Simon Boccanegra; Aida; Otello; two Falstaff productions, starring Sir Bryn Terfel and Reginald Smith, Jr.; and Il trovatore, in three productions, starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Tamara Wilson, and in fall 2024, Michael Spyres and Ailyn Pérez.  

Summers conducts his first world premiere for HGO, Tod Machover’s Resurrection starring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. He will go on to conduct the world premieres of Carlisle Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree (2000); Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince (2003); Jake Heggie’s The End of the Affair (2004); Christopher Theofanidis’s The Refuge (2007); Heggie’s Three Decembers (Last Acts) (2008); André Previn’s Brief Encounter (2009); Floyd’s Prince of Players (2016); Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life (2016); Tarik O’Regan’s The Phoenix (2019); and Joel Thompson’s The Snowy Day (2021). 

An HGO video recording of Mark Adamo’s Little Women, conducted by Summers, is aired on PBS’s Great Performances.

HGO releases a recording of Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, conducted by Summers, through Albany Records.

• Summers conducts the Santa Fe Opera world premiere of Paul Moravec’s The Letter.

• Summers conducts his first Wagner opera, Lohengrin, in Houston, a decade after taking over leadership of the HGO Orchestra, marking a new era for the company. It will become one of many highlights of his HGO tenure, alongside productions including Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Elektra; Handel’s Saul and Julius Caesar; Mozart’s Idomeneo, The Abduction from the Seraglio, Don Giovanni, and The Marriage of Figaro; Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, and Turandot; Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites; Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen; Lehár’s The Merry Widow; Britten’s Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, and The Turn of the Screw; Smyth’s The Wreckers; and Kern’s Show Boat.

Summers conducts the Dallas Opera world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick.  

Summers is named HGO’s Artistic and Music Director.

HGO releases a recording of Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, conducted by Summers, through Erato. 

Summers delivers the Campbell Lecture Series at Rice University’s School of Humanities. Five years later, these lectures serve as the basis for Summers’s first book, The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit.

• HGO launches its ambitious four-year (one opera per year) staging of Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle under Summers’s baton.

• HGO stages the American premiere of Weinberg’s The Passenger, conducted by Summers, both in Houston and at the Lincoln Center Festival.

• Summers conducts the Dallas Opera world premiere of Jake Heggie’s Great Scott.

• Summers is honored with the San Francisco Opera Medal, the company’s highest honor.

Summers is awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University, acknowledging distinguished achievements in the field of opera, particularly as a mentor of younger artists. 

Summers is named co-director of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS alongside Renée Fleming.

Summers conducts Renée Fleming’s Kennedy Center Honors segment, surprising her on camera with a four-soprano arrangement of the “Song to the Moon” from Dvořák's Rusalka, sung by Julia Bullock, Ailyn Pérez, Angel Blue, and Nadine Sierra. 

Summers is named a distinguished lecturer in opera studies at the Rice University Shepherd School of Music.

Summers publishes a pair of novels, Key Change: An Alternative History of Mozart and A Collection of Brevities, with more to come. 

• Summers conducts the American premiere of Robert Wilson’s production of Messiah, composed by Handel and arranged by Mozart, in his final engagement as HGO’s Artistic and Music Director. At season’s close, he will have led the company through 27 seasons, conducting 419 performances of 87 productions, 13 of which were (or will be) released as recordings.

• In August, Summers officially becomes HGO’s Music Director Emeritus. And a new chapter begins.