Prodigiously talented and just as hard working, Lucy Summerfield is well on the way to converting her successes as a teenage singer-songwriter into a multi-faceted music career, with a palette of skills that spans her voice, musicianship, composition, orchestration, engineering and production. Kia kaua, her first post-uni single, is a waiata about watching someone you love go through grief, replete with metaphor. In August she followed up with When I leave, a string quartet-backed vocal ode to the small towns of Aotearoa, specifically about how you can feel the most homesick when you’re actually home. With understated elegance the two singles announce her debut EP, planned for near the end of 2026.

Lucy Summerfield grew up in Christchurch then Motueka, moving further north to Wellington to study music at university. She says music has always been an important part of connecting in her family.

“My grandfathers on both sides play guitar, and I have very fond and early memories of sitting with them and singing old songs. My parents both played music before I was born and I followed in my dad’s footsteps playing saxophone. I actually learned on the saxophone my great uncle played in dance bands in Kaikōura in the 1940s. There’s definitely musical whakapapa there!

“I play guitar because my dad said it was more portable than a piano, and I play saxophone because when I raised the piano thing again music lessons for sax were free through the Ministry of Education, and piano lessons weren’t! My first instrument though is always my voice. It was where I started, it’s where most of my compositions start in some way, vocals are my favourite part of building a song.”

The annual secondary schools’ Hook, Line and Sing-along songwriting competitions, run by MENZA and the NZ Music Commission was instrumental in bringing her composition skills to the surface.

“I was so lucky at Motueka High School to have such a dedicated music teacher, Ms Sinclair. She really sees the potential in every student and pushed me to enter Hook, Line and Sing-along in 2019. I’m a bit of a dilly-dallier and so the song wasn’t ready until about 20 mins before the entry time! Ms Sinclair held up a Zoom recorder in the instrument storage room while I played it through!

“I was really honoured to win the competition that year and to get to record at Roundhead Studios. For me that was the first time I really saw music as a career I wanted to pursue. Mike Young was at NZ Music Commission at the time and he was fantastic. I got to work with Ruby Frost and we stopped at the plaque exactly halfway down Dominion Road. It changed the trajectory of my life and what I thought was possible.”

Lucy got to record at Roundhead a second time as a young teen through being a national finalist for Tangata Beats, resulting in her debut single release Hurihia. 

“It was a totally different experience. I didn’t realise how guided my first experience there was until I turned up in 2021 and felt completely unprepared. I wanted drums but I didn’t know how to play them, and didn’t have the skills to articulate my thoughts yet. The process of developing a song from what I played live to a recorded track was pretty foreign to me. We were only there for a day, I wanted to make the most of my time but I just didn’t have the skills to get what I wanted. I remember recording the last vocal and then running out the door with my mum into the car to get to the airport.

“I got into the back seat and just immediately starting sobbing. I was so tired, I’d given every scrap of energy and creative juice to the recording and I really felt like I hadn’t done it justice at all. I felt like I’d tainted my whole Roundhead experience.

“It was only when I got home and dad asked me, ‘How did it go?’ that I realised, despite all that, I would have gone back and done it all again the next day. For me that was the moment I realised I wanted to do music no matter what. I wanted to continue learning, to get better at it, to understand the whole process deeply and keep getting experience however I could.”

Though of European descent she says that having studied te reo Māori at school for four years, it made perfect sense to her to compose Hurihia in the language. The poignant way she reflects on universal human experiences in her music has since seen Lucy recognised nationally for her music in both te reo and English.

Her school days completed Lucy left her Whakatū home at 17, with a tertiary scholarship from Network Tasman Trust, heading north to Te Whanganui-a-Tara to study the Bachelor of Commercial Music degree at Massey University. She completing her BCommMus at the end of 2025 – and is now working towards the release of a six-song debut EP. 

“I went in to Massey wanting to be a songwriter, and fell in love with studio engineering and producing! I went in wanting to be the next Bic Runga and came out wanting to be financially stable in a music career, making things I am proud of.

“Massey University really opened my eyes to all the different types of work that go into making a song. I love the whole process and I have opinions the whole way too, so it felt like a logical next step to develop those skills. That was the reason I chose to be the producer and audio engineer for this EP. I wanted a substantial project to hone my new skills on.”

“My upcoming EP was my final project. It’s the most ambitious and hardest thing I’ve tried, and I thought nothing could be harder than Ngā Manu Kōrero (the national speech competition). The title of the EP is ‘We are learning too’, and each song represents a piece of knowledge I’ve gained. From the beginning of the EP my focus was learning, and I’ve grown so much. I didn’t think I would get to write music for strings for a really long time, it’s been so rewarding to be able to achieve goals like that.

“The learning curve was steep and I wasn’t very good at being bad at it in the beginning. I also had a heap of support from tutors, friends and classmates. There’s a lot of talented people around who were so generous with their time and their knowledge. I think it’s particularly important as a wahine in the music industry to have a deep understanding of how to do the whole process. It gives you a knowledge base to pull from when you encounter people who won’t take you seriously.”

A songwriter, singer, recording artist and budding engineer/producer Lucy says that she only recently realised she is in fact a composer first. A wonderfully diverse music career lies ahead for this high achiever.

“I thought I was all about performing and making music that communicates my ideas. Then I started composing for dance, theatre and film and it was even more fun. It doesn’t have the stress of delivering a performance, but I still get the rush of watching music I’ve created become part of something bigger. All those job titles feed into each other though. My composing process is intertwined with producing. I love performing and I release music so I get to perform more. How I view myself really depends on the mahi I’m doing that week.”

Lucy was listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell when she wrote When I leave, explaining she wanted the rhythm of the lyrics to lead the melody in the way Mitchell’s writing does.

“I spent a long time crafting each word and making new iterations of the song. I thought the string arrangement would be the icing on top but it’s ended up being the emotional heart. There’s a beautiful high note played by the first violin in the end chorus that Toloa Faraimo added in the studio on a whim. It’s my favourite part of the whole track. All that to say making music is really a mix of persistent ideation and random strokes of brilliance. Those creative lightning strikes are what made music fun in the beginning, but I’m learning to love the crafting and hard graft as well.”

Her EP is titled ‘We are learning too’, and scheduled for release in late November. Lucy admits that part has been a bit of a moving target – not least because she is now working full time while doing it all independently – and also keeps saying yes to other cool opportunities. For now she says it’s great to have control over what goes out into the world as ‘Lucy Summerfield’.

“At this stage in my career I’m doing everything, as are so many musicians. The main challenge for me is having the steam for marketing. I’m finding out more about the release process with every song that goes out into the world, so I’m just leaning into that.  

“However I need to disappear into the bush every now and then to keep my mind, so there’s not a whole lot of time. The big industry players want you to build your own audience before they invest, so it’s really about doing the mahi and it takes a long time to see the treats.

“For me this EP is a step in the right direction. Kia kaua and When I leave have been played on NZ radio. Kia kaua was featured on a Spotify editorial playlist, and both made it onto the NZ On Air NewTracks playlist. These are all little signs I’m moving in the direction I want. Am I executing the perfect release strategy? Absolutely not. Am I learning a heck of a lot of things I can do differently for the next one? Totally. Getting this EP out is just the first step!”