Sir Andrew Davis

Music Director, Lyric Opera of Chicago

Since 2000, Sir Andrew Davis has served as Music Director & Principal Conductor of Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he will conduct three of the eight productions presented in the 2010-2011 season. Maestro Davis is the Conductor Laureate of the Toronto Symphony (having previously served as the Principal Conductor), the Conductor Laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (having served as the 2 nd longest running Chief Conductor since its founder, Sir Adrian Boult) and the former Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Sir Andrew also serves as Artistic Advisor to the Besançon Festival.

Born in 1944 in Hertfordshire, England, Maestro Davis studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar before taking up the baton. His diverse repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary, and his vast conducting credits span the symphonic and operatic and choral worlds. Sir Andrew is a great proponent of twentieth-century works including those by Janáček, Messiaen, Boulez, Elgar, Tippett, and Britten, in addition to the core symphonic and

operatic composers’ works.

With the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Maestro Davis has led concerts at the London Proms and on tour to Hong Kong, Japan, the US, and Europe. He has conducted all of the major orchestras of the world from the Chicago Symphony to the Berlin Philarmonic to the Royal Concertgebouw, and at opera houses and festivals throughout the world including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the Bayreuth Festival.

Maestro Davis is also a prolific recording artist. He has recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics International, Capriccio, EMI, and CBS. In 2008, Sir Andrew released Elgar’s Violin Concertos featuring violinist James Ehnes and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra on the Onyx Classics label, which won Gramophone’s coveted “Best of Category – Concerto” award. Releases in 2007 included Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with violinist Min-Jyn Kim and the London Philharmonia Orchestra on the Sony label; a solo recital of operatic favorites sung by soprano Nicole Cabell with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the Decca label, which in 2008 won the Solti Prize from the French Académie du Disque Lyrique; and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Yundi Li and the London Philharmonia Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon. Sir Andrew currently records exclusively for Chandos Records. His first Chandos recording, Sir Edward Elgar’s The Crown of India, was released in 2010.

In 1992, Maestro Davis was created a Commander of the British Empire for his services to British music, and in 1999 he was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours List. In 1991, he received the Royal Philharmonic Society/Charles Heidsieck Music Award.

In the 2010-2011 season he conducts productions of The Mikado, Lohengrin and Girl of the Golden West at Lyric Opera of Chicago. He will be seen on the podium with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Sir Andrew makes returns again to the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms and in London and to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra where he will lead performances of his own new orchestration of Handel’s  Messiah. Maestro Davis also makes return appearances with the Metropolitan Opera (Capriccio), the Canadian Opera Company (Ariadne auf Naxos), the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Peter Grimes), and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Maestro Davis and his wife, soprano Gianna Rolandi, reside in Chicago where she is the Director of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. For more information about Maestro Davis, please visit his web site at www.sirandrewdavis.com.