Sir Andrew Davis Named Chief Conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Sir Andrew Davis, music director and principal conductor of the world-renowned Lyric Opera of Chicago, will add to his considerable credits the post of chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra beginning in January 2013, it was announced on Monday in AustraliA. Davis is in Melbourne for concerts with the MSO this month. His initial contract in Melbourne is for four years.

Davis’s contract with Lyric Opera of Chicago was recently extended through the 2020-21 season. He will conduct Strauss’s Elektra, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Massenet’s Werther, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg during Lyric’s 2012-13 season.

The English conductor, music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago since 2000, is conductor laureate of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (having previously served as principal conductor), conductor laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (having previously had the longest tenure as chief conductor since BBCSO founder Sir Adrian Boult) and former music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera. During the 2011-12 season Sir Andrew led performances of Boris Godunov, Ariadne auf Naxos, and The Magie Flute at Lyric Opera; as well as a subscriber appreciation concert featuring soprano Renée Fleming (Lyric’s creative consultant) and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The season also brought Sir Andrew to the Metropolitan Opera and to Melbourne, London, Bamberg, Edinburgh, and Toronto.

In previous seasons Sir Andrew has been welcomed by the leading orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Montreal, Toronto, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and virtually every other major orchestra worldwide. He has also won great acclaim at the Met, La Scala, the Royal Opera House-Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, the Bayreuth Festival, Santa Fe Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company. New releases in his massive discography include works of Elgar, Delius, Holst, and York Bowen. In 2008, Sir Andrew released Elgar’s Violin Concertos, featuring violinist James Ehnes and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (Onyx Classics), which won Gramophone’s coveted “Best of Category – Concerto” Award.

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. A native of Hertfordshire, Maestro Davis studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar before taking up the baton. He lives in Chicago with his wife Gianna Rolandi, director of The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago.