Jeffrey Skidmore

Jeffrey Skidmore OBE (born 27 February 1951) is the conductor and artistic director of Ex Cathedra, a choir and early music ensemble based in Birmingham, West Midlands, England. He has researched and performed choral works of the 16th to 18th centuries and worked with other musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French and Italian music.

Jeffrey Skidmore

Early life and education

Jeffrey Skidmore was born in Birmingham, England, in 1951. He attended St. Heliers Road Sunday School in Northfield before 1962, when he went to Bournville Boys Technical School (later, Bournville Grammar-Technical School for Boys).

Ex Cathedra

Skidmore (rear, in front of the door) with the Ex Cathedra choir in the café of the Birmingham Town Hall, 1 March 2008

Skidmore began conducting at school at 18 years old when he founded the Ex Cathedra choir in Birmingham in 1969. After Bournville, he went on to read music with David Wulstan at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a choral scholar under Bernard Rose. He then taught as a music school teacher in Birmingham, including at John Willmott School in Sutton Coldfield.

While directing the Ex Cathedra choir, and its associated Ex Cathedra Consort and Baroque Orchestra, Skidmore appeared in concert series and festivals across the UK and abroad, and has produced several recordings. He regularly conducts other ensembles such as the BBC Singers, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and the Hanover Band. He and Ex Cathedra have commissioned over thirty new works and conducted many world premieres by composers including Sally Beamish, Fyfe Hutchins, Gabriel Jackson, John Joubert, James MacMillan, Alec Roth, Daryl Runswick, Peter Sculthorpe, Philip Sheppard, Peter Wiegold, and Roderick Williams.

In the field of opera, Skidmore worked with Marc Minkowski and David McVicar on the 2004 production of Eccles's 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 Royal 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.

Skidmore was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), in the 2015 New Year Honours, for services to choral music.

On 27 Jan 2026 Ex Cathedra announced that Skidmore would retire as Artistic Director in the autumn of 2027, continuing as Founder and Conductor Emeritus. James Burton will join Ex Cathedra as Artistic Director Designate in the spring of 2026.

Contributions to musicology and musical education

A lecturer and honorary fellow at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, he has worked with many musicologists to prepare new performing editions of French, Italian, and Spanish music by Giovanni Animuccia, Juan de Araujo, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, Claudio Monteverdi, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Skidmore is Artistic Director of Early Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and director of Ex Cathedra's 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 Arts Festival.

See also

• Ex Cathedra

References

• The artists, Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, archived from the original on 28 September 2007, retrieved 20 February 2008.
• Jeffrey Skidmore, Ex Cathedra, archived from the original on 9 May 2008, retrieved 20 February 2008.
• Programme for Ex Cathedra's performance of John Joubert's Wings of Faith at The Oratory, Birmingham, on 22 March 2007.

Further reading

• Dunnett, Roderic (19 April 2000), "Ex Cathedra, Lichfield Cathedral [concert review]", The Independent.
• Church, Michael (9 September 2001), "The Jesuits invent fusion", The Independent.
• Northcott, Bayan (1 February 2002), "Ex Cathedra, St John's, Smith Square, London: Rome's genius resurrected", The Independent.
• Northcott, Bayan (24 May 2002), "Ex Cathedra/Skidmore, St John's, Smith Square, London: When world music met the Baroque [preview of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music 2002]", The Independent.
• Norris, Geoffrey (15 July 2004), "Dies Irae to didgeridoo [review of the Lichfield Festival 2004]", The Daily Telegraph.
• Stewart, Pat (July 2005), "Eastern Early Music Forum: Lalande day with Jeffrey Skidmore", EEMF Newsletter 59, archived from the original on 29 September 2007, retrieved 8 April 2007.
• "From the priest-hole era", Church Times, no. 7445, 18 November 2005.
• Dunnett, Roderic (14 December 2005), "Ex Cathedra, Oratory, Birmingham [review of "A Latin American Christmas" concert]", The Independent, archived from the original on 1 December 2008.
• Morley, Christopher (22 June 2007), "The full Monte by candlelight: Ex Cathedra at Birmingham Oratory", Birmingham Post (reproduced at icStafford.co.uk), archived from the original on 19 July 2011, retrieved 17 July 2022.

External links

• Jeffrey Skidmore at the website of Ex Cathedra
• Jeffrey Skidmore at the Bach Cantatas website
• Jeffrey Skidmore at the Hyperion Records website
• Jeffrey Skidmore at the website of the Lacock Summer School, which conducts courses for singers and players of Renaissance and Baroque instruments Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
• "Jeffrey Skidmore at the website of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 8 April 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
• Jeffrey Skidmore at the website of Mayler Artist Management Archived 5 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine