British chef Andrew Davis died on Saturday at the age of 80 from leukemia, according to information from his family. Andrew Davis was the music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1975 to 1988 and the emblematic conductor of numerous editions of the famous “ Last Night of the Proms » which crowned the Proms, the famous London summer festival organized by the BBC.
The death of Andrew Davis surprised the music world this weekend, with most music lovers learning of his illness at the same time as his passing. Andrew Davis hadn’t put his career on hold per se. Musical seasons 2024-2025 with very recently printed programs will appear in the coming days with his name associated with concerts planned in 2025.
The name of Andrew Davis particularly resonates in Canada, since he arrived in Toronto, his first post, in the mid-1970s, at the same time as Charles Dutoit began his mandate in Montreal. Andrew Davis, born in 1944, began his recording career at Columbia (CBS) with a complete set of Symphonies by Dvořák. Relations with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), which subsequently appointed him honorary musical director, remained very close, because when the TSO wanted to take its time to appoint Peter Oundjian’s successor as musical director, he had called on Andrew Davis to become interim artistic director (2018-2020). In Toronto, Andrew Davis presided over the TSO’s move to Roy Thomson Hall in 1982. He was also behind the creation of the Toronto Children’s Chorus.
Many facets
Andrew Davis has been a very prominent conductor, as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 2000, and then honorary conductor, he has had a strong media presence and recorded extensively, notably for Chandos. Both an operatic and symphonic conductor, he was musical director of the Glyndebourne Festival from 1988 to 2000, then musical director of the Lyric Opera of Chicago (2000-2021), which had just named him honorary conductor. Andrew Davis was also conductor of the Melbourne Orchestra (2013-2019).
Andrew Davis started out in his twenties as a pianist, harpsichordist and organist at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (1966-1970). He will remain closely associated with the famous “Last Night of the Proms”, a British musical institution, which he embodied in the modern era. His pandemic project had been literary: the English translation of The Aeneid by Virgil!
The repertoire covered by Andrew Davis is immense and often very original. Many recordings of English music are referential. He has often accompanied the Canadian violinist James Ehnes, notably on his latest CD, the Violin Concerto by Stravinsky. Michael Tippett’s masterpiece, the oratorio A Child of our Timewill be published under his direction on May 3 by Chandos.