Robert Summer
Founder and Music Director Emeritus

Dr. Robert Summer, founder and music director emeritus of The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, serves as Professor of Music and Coordinator of Graduate Choral Studies at the University of South Florida School of Music.  Dr. Summer has prepared many choruses for conductors including Irwin Hoffman, Jahja Ling, Julius Rudel, Sir David Willcocks, Sir Neville Marriner, and Robert Shaw. The Master Chorale and USF Chamber Singers were invited by Shaw to participate in performances and a recording on Telarc Records of the Mahler Symphony No. 8 with the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus in 1991.

Dr. Summer has been a guest conductor of The Florida Orchestra on a regular basis, having conducted performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana, Verdi’s Requiem, the Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and other major choral/orchestral masterworks. In 1990 he had a Carnegie Hall debut conducting the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra and several choirs from throughout the United States in Schubert’s Mass in G Major. The Master Chorale and the USF Chamber Singers under his direction, joined Sir David Willcocks and The London Bach Choir in June 1996 for a performance of the Berlioz Requiem in Westminster Cathedral, London, as well as in a concert of American and English music at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.