SIR ANDREW DAVIS is one of today’s most highly regarded international conductors. He has been serving as Music Director of Lyric Opera of Chicago since 2000. Davis is the Conductor Laureate of the Toronto Symphony and the BBC Symphony and the former Music Director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Born in 1944 in Hertfordshire, England, 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. In addition to the core symphonic and operatic composers, he is a great proponent of 20th-century works, including those by Janácek, Messiaen, Boulez, Elgar, Tippett, and Britten.

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

Davis is also a prolific recording artist. He has recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Classics International, Capriccio, EMI, and CBS. Recent releases include the Beethoven Violin Concerto with violinist Min-Jyn Kim and the Philharmonia Orchestra on the Sony label, a CD of operatic favorites on the Decca label – featuring soprano Nicole Cabell, and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Yundi Li and the Philharmonia Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon.

In 1992, Davis was named 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 2007/08 season at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Davis conducted a new production of Die frau ohne Schatten, as well as revivals of La traviata, La bohème, Falstaff, and Eugene Onegin. Orchestral engagements include concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the London Philharmonia, the Orchestre de Paris, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony. During the summer he appears with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia, and the Los Angles Philharmonic, here at the Hollywood Bowl.