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 in the West Midlands, England.

After going to Bournville Boys Technical School, he went on to read music with David Wulstan at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a choral scholar under Bernard Rose.

He has commissioned over thirty new works and conducted many world premières by well-established and new 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' 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.

A lecturer and honorary fellow at Royal 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, Italian and Spanish music by Giovanni Animuccia, Juan de Araujo, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Michel Richard Delalande, Claudio Monteverdi and Jean-Philippe Rameau.