Isabella Summers
Summers in 2011
Background information
Birth name	Isabella Janet Florentina Summers
Also known as	Isa Machine
Born	(1980-10-31)31 October 1980 (age 44) Hackney, England
Genres	Indie rock indie pop art rock alternative rock experimental
Occupations	Musician songwriter producer composer remixer
Years active	2008–present
Labels	Universal Publishing
Member of	Florence + the Machine

Isabella Janet Florentina Summers^[1][2] (born 31 October 1980)^[3] is an English Emmy-nominated film composer, songwriter/producer and musician. She is best known as the architect of the sound of the six-time Grammy nominated indie rock bandFlorence and the Machine. Summers spent 14 years writing, producing, touring, and composing her cinematic sound before making the jump from pop music to composing for film and television.

Summers lived her first nine years inHackney, London.^[4] When Summers was ten, her family moved toAldeburgh,Suffolk. There Summers attendedWoodbridge School,^[5] had piano lessons and grew an interest in music, crediting some influence frommixtapes made by her father with "a very eclectic mixture of everything and anything fromBeethoven toBob Dylan, rarities, poetry, even theShipping forecast".^[6]Hip-hop was a preferred genre, as her neighbours gave her a tape withSnoop Dogg'sDoggystyle (1993) and6 Feet Deep (1994) byGravediggaz; she would also spend evenings with fishermen's sons "who smoked loads ofweed and listened to hard American rap."^[7][3]

Summers moved toEast Dulwich,^[6] back in London, where she would get a fine arts degree atCentral Saint Martins. While there, she bought a set ofDJ mixers to learn how tomix, while also doing side jobs such as being acourier forTop of the Pops and transcriptions and film digitizing forAlan Parker.^[5] Soon she was working with Dan Greenpeace on his 'All City Show' radio show onXFM London, an experience that led Summers to buy her firstMPC which was installed at the cupboard of her shared flat. With the help of a friend she started a studio in a former plastics factory atCrystal Palace, and began makinghip hop.^[7] During this time, Summers worked with, amongst others, Kashmere, The Iguana Man, IRS Crew, MBC Crew,Inja andThe Last Skeptik. She metFlorence Welch through art school and DJ work, as Welch was attending theCamberwell College of Arts.^[8]

As Summers was hired to remix songs by the bandLudes, Welch became a more common sight at her studio given she was dating Ludes' guitarist Matt Alchin, and even impressed Summers with her singing. One day, as Summers got into a creative rut, which she described as getting "sick of boys telling me what to do", she thought of writingpop music with a woman, and invited Welch to make songs with her. Following a day joining Summers' beats with Welch's lyrics, they began writing demos together, which were produced by Summers by banging on the walls to make drum sounds and using the string sounds from her keyboard. It was also during this period that Summers saw a man on the street carrying a "coffin shaped box" and asked him what it was, it turned out to be Tom Monger carrying his harp, Summers suggested that he play on the demos that became 'Dog Days Are Over' and 'Between Two Lungs'. This led to their performing together for a time under the name Florence Robot/Isa Machine, the project was renamedFlorence and the Machine. Summers had only thought of being a producer and songwriter on the project but ended up also as the group's keyboardist, with her second gig being the 2007Glastonbury Festival. Summers has co-written and produced on Florence and the Machine's first three albumsLungs (2009),Ceremonials (2011) andHow Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015).^[9] As of June 2016, 'Dog Days Are Over' has had over 3,151,000 downloads in the United States alone. The track 'Dog Days Are Over' was used in Marvel's 2023 movieGuardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.^[10] 'Dog Days Are Over' was referenced on Drake's track 'Rich Baby Daddy' featuringSZA andSexyy Red from his 2023 album 'For All The Dogs'.^[11]

Summers has also written, produced and remixed tracks for artists includingBeyoncé,Juliette Lewis,Jennifer Hudson,Jasmine Thompson,Cara Delevingne,Chloe x Halle,Flux Pavilion,Rita Ora,Judith Hill,LP andThe Game.^{[12][13][14][15]}

Summers had created the main title song "Was It Love" for theSky Atlantic seriesRiviera,^[16] and provided her friendSam Levinson the song "Rage" for his filmAssassination Nation (2018),^[17] when right after finishing theHigh as Hope Tour, that film's music supervisor Mary Ramos invited Summers for her first composing gig in a team-up withMark Isham, scoring theHulu miniseriesLittle Fires Everywhere,^[18] which won her aPrimetime Emmy Award nomination.^[19] Summers followed it by composing the score for thePrime Video seriesPanic alongside Brian H. Kim,^[20] and Netflix'sSex/Life in another collaboration with Isham.^[21] Her first solo composing gig was theApple TV showPhysical, whose 1980s setting led to a score full of "crazysynths and over-the-top guitar solos".^[22] Afterwards Summers scored her first movie,Call Jane (2022),^[23] and theParamount+ showThe Offer.^[24] In 2022 Summers scored Sony's 3000 Pictures and Netflix filmLady Chatterly's Lover, directed byLaure de Clermont-Tonnerre and starringEmma Corrin andJack O'Connell. In 2023 Summers scored theApple TV+ adult animation seriesStrange Planet byDan Harmon andNathan W. Pyle released on August 9, 2023.^[25] Following this she also scored the third and final season ofPhysical forApple TV+ released on August 2, 2023.^[26] In 2023, Summers scored the soundtrack for theFocus Features filmLisa Frankenstein, directed byZelda Williams released February 2024. She also scored the filmBreathe, directed byStefon Bristol and starringJennifer Hudson, which was released in April 2024. She wrote the original score for the Netflix showKAOS released in August 2024 and the animated comedyHitpig! released in November of 2024. Forthcoming projects include making her documentary scoring debut on the upcoming feature Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. The film is directed byJeremy O. Harris and follows the playwright as he deconstructs his Tony-nominated playSlave Play.

Summers was invited by theCy Twombly Foundation in conjuncture withGagosian Gallery to interpretCy Twombly's sculptures into music for their 2019 London exhibition 'Cy Twombly Sculpture', the piece titled 'To Neptune, Ruler of the Seas Profound' was interwoven with quotations from poems and literary texts by authors who have served as muses or subjects for Twombly, including Homer, Stéphane Mallarmé, and William Butler Yeats. The performance expands on a composition Summers performed in Rome in May 2022 at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio.^[27] Furthermore Summers performed it a third time at theGagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills in 2022 to a sold out audience.

In the summer of 2024 Isabella Summers performed atThe National Gallery in collaboration with Pipeline. Summers responded in music and spoken word to two paintings byCaravaggio 'The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula' and 'Salome and the Head of John The Baptist'. The paintings made up the exhibition 'The Last Caravaggio', held at The National Gallery. In Autumn 2024 Isabella wrote the music for the soundtrack to theVivienne Westwood Tunis Fashion Week 2024 show.

• Isabella Summers atAllMusic
• Isabella Summers discography atDiscogs
• Isabella Summers atIMDb

Media related toIsabella Summers at Wikimedia Commons

• Living people
• 1980 births
• English record producers
• People from Aldeburgh
• English women songwriters
• English rock keyboardists
• Pop keyboardists
• British indie pop musicians
• People educated at Woodbridge School
• Musicians from the London Borough of Hackney
• Musicians from Suffolk
• English film score composers
• English television composers
• Florence and the Machine members

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