Suzanne Summerville, mezzo-soprano, choral conductor and music historian, received her A.B. in Music from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a diploma in Song and Oratorio from the Vienna Academy of Music, a Masters in Music from the University of Houston and her doctorate in Historical Musicology from the Freie Universität Berlin. She was a Fulbright Scholar and has been the recipient of numerous grants from such entities as the Alaska State Legislature, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Alaska Humanities Forum, the Fairbanks Arts Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

As a singer she has performed with the Houston Grand Opera Association and the Studio der deutschen Oper Berlin and has given recitals in New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church and many other venues in the United States, Germany, Holland, Poland, France, Norway and Canada. She joined the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and in 1999 retired as Professor of Music and Women’s Studies. At UAF she conducted the Fairbanks Choral Society, the Fairbanks Children’s Choir, and taught Voice and Music History.

As a writer for international encyclopedias, she has current entries in the New Grove 2000 (Fairbanksan Robert M Crawford, composer of "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder")Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, Women and Music in America since 1900 and the Encyclopedia of Popular Music in the World (Popular Music in Alaska).

Her recordings include From the Great Land (ArtsVenture) ­ song cycles by Violet Archer, Ravonna Martin and Corey Field based on the poetry of Interior Alaskan poets Frank Buske, Katherine Doak and Linda Schandelmeier with Robert McCoy, piano, and Richard Nunemaker, clarinet.

She is the founding conductor Fairbanks' Sing-It-Yourself-Messiah, winner of the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) ­ CHORUS AMERICA Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music, a citation from the 18th Legislature of the State of Alaska and a recipient of the Alaska Governor's Award for the Arts.