Summer began playing French horn at the age of seven. Rudimentary attempts at composition followed immediately. At the age of 13, while attending the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina as a hornist, he was fortunate to be allowed to study composition with the eminent Czech composer, Karel Husa. Two years later, the fledgling composer was accepted at Oberlin Conservatory, graduating with a B.M. in Music Composition in 1976. After being recruited by Robert Page at Carnegie-Mellon University to teach music theory, Summer spent a brief two years further in academia before leaving in 1978 to pursue composition full-time. His last major piece written as a student, a concerto for French horn and orchestra, The Silver Swan, won the 1980 National federation Of Music Clubs' Orchestral Composition Contest.

In Philadelphia, in 1981, The Tenor's Suite, a one act tragedy based on The Tenor, by Frank Wedekind, was Summer's first produced opera, fully staged, though in piano reduction, with assistance from the National Endowment of The Arts. Shortly thereafter, his first opera, Hippolytus was performed in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia by the Contemporary Opera Company of America which Summer founded in 1982 in order to produce opera by living American composers.

For the next twenty years the composer concentrated his efforts primarily in two areas: a series of comic operas based on the bawdy stories of Boccaccio's The Decameron; and a growing collection of Shakespeare settings labeled The Oxford Songs. The comic operas consist of four completed works: 1) And The Dead Shall Walk The Earth, 2) Courting Disaster, 3) Their Fate In The Hands Of The Friar; 4) Gianetta; and a fifth (of a planned seven) in progress: 5) Also Known As.

In 2003 Summer established The Shakespeare Concerts which in its seven seasons has premiered more than twenty of his sixty odd Oxford Songs, as well as the works of other composers who've set the Bard. An ardent Oxfordian, Summer also lectures about Edward DeVere, the 17th earl of Oxford, and putative author of the plays and poetry written under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare.

Summer's opera, Hamlet, which was finished in 2006, joins a list of works which include three cantatas, sundry works for chamber ensembles, and the Borges inspired string quartet, The Garden Of Forking Paths (2007). Recently, Summer was awarded a grant for the creation of a third CD of Shakespearean themed music to be recorded in the winter of 2008. The composer lives in Worcester, Massachusetts with his wife of thirty years, Lisa Summer, a professor of music therapy and world-renowned practitioner and trainer of Guided Imagery and Music. Their daughter, Eve is a Shakespearean actress and stage director.

John McGinn began his position as music director and pianist with The Shakespeare Concerts in its inaugural season of 2003. He has enjoyed widespread acclaim as a performer of new music, appearing with such groups as American Camerata, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and the Kennedy Center Orchestra. Recording credits include John Adams' Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Fearful Symmetries, and both The Shakespeare Concerts CDs. His piano reductions of works by John Adams and Christopher Rouse, and his original compositions have brought him numerous honors including two BMI awards, a fellowship from the Harvard Music Department, and designation as a Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. A professor at Clark University, McGinn holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a doctorate in composition from Stanford.