Celebrated conductor led Toronto orchestra

Brit made debut with BBC Symphony

Andrew Davis, an acclaimed British conductor who served as music director at orchestras on three continents, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 13 years, has died. He was 80.

Davis died Saturday at Rusk Institute in Chicago from leukemia, his manager, Jonathan Brill of Opus 3 Artists, said Sunday.

Davis had been managing the disease for between 1 1/2 and 2 years, but it became acute shortly after his 80th birthday on Feb. 2. He had conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last December in the U.S. première of his own orchestration of Handel's Messiah.

Throughout his life, he conducted an estimated 1,000 TSO concerts at venues across Toronto. He led a historic 1978 tour to China with Canadian opera singer Maureen Forrester, and festival tours that included Edinburgh and the Proms.

Born in Ashridge, in the Hertfordshire county of England, Andrew Frank Davis played organ for his parish choir and joined the choir at the Watford Grammar School for Boys. He studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London, became an organ student at King's College Cambridge, and played piano, harpsichord and organ with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields from 1966-70.

He made his conducting debut with the BBC Symphony in 1970, became an assistant conductor with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra, then in 1971 made his North American debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

But an opening in Toronto offered Davis the chance of a lifetime. The TSO was looking to fill the position of Karel Ancerl, the orchestra's globally renowned music director who had died in 1973.

At only 30 years old, Davis was an ideal candidate. So much so, the TSO's then-manager Walter Homburger flew to London to offer him the job, which he accepted.

“It just seemed right,” Davis told the Toronto Star in 2015. “I'd had many jobs, but I was ready to have an orchestra of my own.”

Davis held the role of TSO music director from 1975 to 1988, when he was named conductor laureate.

He continued to make annual appearances with the TSO each year until his death. He was involved with 33 recordings with the city's orchestra — three of them winning classical Juno Awards — and helped open Roy Thomson Hall as the home of the TSO in 1982.

In 2016, the City of Toronto named a street near the home where he once lived as Sir Andrew Davis Lane.

“One of the finest conductors of his generation,” Carnegie Hall artistic director Clive Gillinson said.

JEFF PACHOUD / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES British conductor Sir Andrew Davis, who served as music director for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 13 years, died Saturday at the age of 80. Davis conducted an estimated 1,000 TSO concerts at venues across Toronto.