Suzi Digby


Susan Elizabeth Digby, Baroness Eatwell OBE, known as Suzi Digby, is a British choral conductor and music educator.

Early life

Born in Japan as Susan Elizabeth Watts, she attended Francis Holland School, Baker Street, before studying music at King's College London.
She lived in Mexico and the Philippines and then spent 12 years in Hong Kong where she presented the region’s first Arts Primetime television series, Art World Presents, interviewing visiting Arts celebrities, including Luciano Pavarotti and Andre Previn.
During her time in Hong Kong Suzi was a presenter on RTHK Radio 4, the Head of Music DGJS Diocesan Girls' Junior School and taught at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
In 1990 she was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship, on which she observed and studied in Finland, Hungary, Canada and the USA, focusing on methods of choral training and music education.
She also trained with Péter Erdei, Head of Choral Studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.
Suzi was guest conductor for István Gimnázium Choir and Orchestra

UK Career and Choirs

1993
Suzi founded and ran The Voices Foundation, which trained hundreds of thousands of Primary school teachers U.K.-wide, impacting several million children. She acted as Voices Foundation Advisory Teacher, in Primary schools across the U.K.
Hilary Finch, The Times reported the Voices Foundation as giving the Nation back its voice.
1996
Musical Director of director of Rosslyn Hill Chapel Choir in Hampstead, London.
1998
She launched Singing Schools, a five-year program in South Africa involving 70 schools in Soweto and Johannesburg. More than 200 African children’s songs have been collected and integrated into the U.K. program.
2000
Director of the Middlesex Bach Choir
Suzi Digby was invited to become a council member of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, where she served as chairman of the Arts category. That same year, she was shortlisted for a Creative Britain Award.
Later, after moving to Cambridge, she chaired the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust bursary scheme for Churchill College, Cambridge.
2003
She founded Voce, one of London’s leading amateur chamber choirs.
2007 New Year Honours
Suzi was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her outstanding services to music education.
2008
Suzi Digby was a judge on the BBC primetime show Last Choir Standing, featuring 16 episodes with the live final attracting 5.56 million viewers in the UK.
2010
She founded Vocal Futures, a Foundation that set out to identify, involve and inspire young people to engage with live classical music, in particular seminal choral-orchestral works, performed in unusual spaces.
Vocal futures aims to identify, involve and inspire young people to begin a lifelong and transformative relationship with classical music: preparing young people for great art, and preparing great art for young people. Our model encompasses education, communication and research, in collaboration with Prof John Sloboda
Suzi's debut with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was met with outstanding critical acclaim: "Choral wizard", "The mother of all music", The Telegraph; "Sensitive and accomplished conductor", Musical America; "A serious force for good within Britain's music education system", New Statesman.
Stephen Fry’s response to the St. Matthew Passion:
“The performance of the St Matthew Passion, staged by Patrick Kinmonth and conceived and conducted by Suzi Digby, was one of the most inspirational evenings I can remember.”

Vocal Futures production of Haydn, The Creation was reviewed by Ivan Hewett as
“There were two forces of nature at this dramatised version of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. One was Suzi Digby. She was the prime mover behind this latest stage of her campaign to get young people involved in classical music. The other was the work itself. The story of the Creation over seven days is pictured in Haydn’s oratorio with awe-inspiring power, and delightful naivety.”-Ivan Hewett

Following two very successful productions, Vocal Futures presented The Choice, a rarely performed gem in Handel’s repertoire.
The 7-year project culminated in a seminar in Queens’ College, Cambridge, in which Suzi Digby and Prof John Sloboda presented their findings to representatives from preforming bodies throughout the U.K.
2011 - 2024
Suzi was visiting Professor at University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, delivering lectures for graduate students on the Choral and Sacred Music program.
2012
Suzi co-founded London Youth Choirs, a pyramid of 10 choirs for children and young adults aged 7 to 23 serving all London’s 32 boroughs and multiple communities.
The organisation provides high-calibre musical education and performance opportunities for young singers across London.
2012-13
President of the Independent Society of Musicians.
2012
Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary
Suzi was the official choral conductor for The Rolling Stones. She fixed and coached 70 local choirs for multiple cities for their 50th Anniversary Tour.
Suzi performed on stage with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in five concerts at O2, Hyde Park and Glastonbury.
2013
Acting Music Director of Queens' College, Cambridge, Suzi founded and ran the Queens' Choral Conducting Programme, an annual conducting course for talented Cambridge University undergraduates.

2014
Suzi founded Singing4Success, providing leadership and 'Accelerated Learning' and leadership corporate workshops.
Suzi launched one of the finest professional consorts in California, The Golden Bridge, which commissioned and premièred 40 works by Californian composers to reflect masterpieces of the English 'Golden' Tudor Age and of the European Renaissance.
2015 - 2016
Suzi conducted 2,000 voices in the Royal Albert Hall in a Scratch Youth Messiah which was awarded first prize for Best Classical Music Education Initiative Nationwide, Classic FM.
2016
Suzi received an honorary Doctorate of Music from University of Aberdeen.
2016
She founded and directs ORA singers
"ORA Singers' achievement in commissioning and performing 100 new compositions from an impressively wide range of composers must be unprecedented in the entire history of music. It has been an extraordinarily imaginative and generous gift to the composers, and indeed to choirs and audiences everywhere. The repertoire of new choral music has been hugely enriched, and we are all in ORA's debt."
- Sir John Rutter

ORA Singers performances and 11 albums have received outstanding critical acclaim and have been awarded Germany’s Opus Klassik for Best Ensemble of the Year, 2018, and, more recently, the prestigious Jahre Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for the 2023 album, Sanctissima.

Radio and Television Appearances

Suzi has had several appearances on Radio and Television, including on BBC Radio 3 In Tune and Inside Music, and as a judge on the BBC1 hit show Last Choir Standing.

Personal life

Susan Watts married in 1980 The Hon. Henry Noel Kenelm Digby, eldest son of Edward Digby, 12th Baron Digby. She has two children from her first marriage. They divorced in 2001.
In July 2006 she married John Eatwell, Baron Eatwell, then President of Queens' College, Cambridge