Singing critics like Melanie Eskenazi describe him as a vocal virtuoso of the local phrasing and decoration (ornamenti) of those particular musical periods exactly as they were practised back then.
Educated at Wellington Grammar School, Nigel Rogers studied at King's College, Cambridge (where he was a choral scholar) from 1953 to 1956, in Rome in 1957, in Milan from 1958 to 1959, and with Gerhard Hüsch at the Munich Hochschule für Musik (1959–1961).
Whilst in Munich, along with Thomas Binkley, Sterling Jones and Andrea von Ramm, he was a founder member of the pioneering medieval ensemble, Studio der Frühen Musik (Early Music Quartet) with which he worked for around three years, leaving the group in December 1963.
In July 1993 he starred at a Handel oratorio at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Opera House in Mexico City.
On 3 May 2005, he gave his 70th birthday recital concert at Wigmore Hall in London, singing works by early music composers Carissimi, Caccini, Sigismondo d'India, Frescobaldi, Marco Marazzoli, Kapsberger, Rossi, Stradella, and Froberger.