Colin Davis dead at 85
Jackson dies
LONDON, April 15, (Agencies): Colin Davis, the former principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and one of Britain’s elder statesmen of classical music, has died at 85.
The orchestra said Davis died Sunday after a short illness.
One of the best-known figures in British music, Davis worked with the London symphony for more than half a century.
He first conducted for the LSO in 1959 and took the principal conductor post in 1995, serving until 2006 before becoming president.
The orchestra said Davis had been “at the head of the LSO family for many years.”
“His musicianship and his humanity have been cherished by musicians and audiences alike,” it said in a statement.
Associated in particular with the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jean Sibelius and Hector Berlioz, Davis won three Grammy awards — two in 2002 for the LSO’s recording of “Les Troyens” by Berlioz, and one for Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff” four years later — and a host of other trophies.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1980.
Davis had worked with ensembles around the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera House, the BBC Symphony and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera House, said Davis’ death was a blow to the company, which had planned to work with him again. Pappano said Davis’ death “represents an end of an era, where grit, toil, vision and energy were the defining elements of a leading international opera house.”
“The warmth and excitement of his music-making will be terribly missed. He was a giant,” Pappano said.
The London Symphony Orchestra said Davis had made an immense contribution to British musical life and that “music lovers across the world have been inspired by his performances and recordings.”
Songwriter George Jackson, coauthor of “Old Time Rock and Roll” and hundreds of other soul, rock and rhythm and blues tunes, has died. He was 68.
Jackson died Sunday morning at his Mississippi home, said Thomas Couch Sr, board chairman of Malaco Records. Jackson had been sick with cancer for about a year.
“It was not unexpected, but it’s always too soon,” Couch said.
Jackson was writing songs by the time he was in his teens. It was Ike Turner who brought Jackson to New Orleans R&B pioneer Cosimo Matassa’s studio in 1963, where he recorded his first song.
Jackson recorded dozens of singles in the 1960s but made his mark as a writer, beginning with FAME Studios. He later was a songwriter for Muscle Shoals Sound Studios. When Malaco bought Muscle Shoals Sound, it hired Jackson to write songs, said Wolf Stephenson, Malaco’s vice-president and chief engineer.
“George had hooks coming out of his ears,” Stephenson said. “They weren’t all hits, but I never heard him write a bad song. He never really got the recognition that’s normally due a writer of his stature.”
A candlelight vigil was planned Sunday in California for Chi Cheng, bassist for Grammy-winning rock band the Deftones, who died after struggling to recover from serious injuries suffered in a car crash more than four years ago.
Cheng, 42, was taken to an emergency room, where his heart stopped early Saturday, his mother, Jeanne Marie Cheng, wrote on the website, One Love for Chi, that had been set up to support him.
He and his band mates won a Best Metal Performance Grammy in 2001, was a “powerful bassist who was larger than life on stage,” the Recording Academy, the industry organization that presents the Grammys, said in a statement Sunday.
“Although the group’s early years were more heavy metalbased,” the statement read, “they were one of the first bands to incorporate a more alternative and ethereal sound into their thunderous and visceral music, blazing a trail that newer bands continue to follow today.”