Dennis Russell Davies

Conductor Dennis Russell Davies has earned esteem for his command of a broad spectrum of repertoire, yet he stands out especially for his assured advocacy of contemporary scores. He has led first performances of pieces by several prominent 20th-century composers and maintains an extensive discography.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, on April 16, 1944, Davies trained at the Juilliard School of Music under Jean Morel and Jorge Mester. His podium debut occurred in 1968 when he directed the Juilliard Ensemble at the Spoleto Festival. The following year the same musicians, appearing as The Ensemble, presented the “New and Newer Music” series at Lincoln Center. In 1970 he conducted the world premiere of Luciano Berio’s opera Opera at the Santa Fe Festival. His initial permanent post was music director of the Norwalk Symphony from 1968 to 1973. Between 1972 and 1980 he led the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and beginning in 1974 he also directed the Cabrillo Music Festival. Davies made his European operatic debut in 1973 with Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Netherlands Opera. In 1977 he helped establish the American Composers Orchestra, serving as its music director until 2001 and thereby forging one of the longest-running relationships in American orchestral life.

During 1978 he became only the second American, after Thomas Schippers, invited to Bayreuth, where he led The Flying Dutchman through 1980. Although Davies has resided in Germany since 1980, he has continued to work extensively in the United States. From 1980 to 1987 he held the post of music director at the Württemburg State Theater in Stuttgart, introducing Henze’s The English Cat, Glass’ Akhnaten, and Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Experience while also staging provocative productions of standard works. Between 1991 and 1996 he served as director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and principal conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. His Metropolitan Opera debut took place in 1996 with the premiere of Glass’ The Voyage. In the same decade he conducted the first performances of Berio’s Un re in ascolto at the Chicago Lyric Opera and Kurt Schwertsik’s Der ewige Frieden in Bonn and Vienna. He served as chief conductor of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra from 1995 to 2006. From 2002 until 2017 he simultaneously headed both the Linz Opera and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, and in 2008 he was appointed music director of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. To mark Glass’ 80th birthday in 2017, Davies conducted the premiere of the composer’s Symphony No. 11.

He assumed the chief conductorship of the Filharmonie Brno in 2018 and took the same position with the MDR-Sinfonieorchester in Leipzig in 2020. That year he led the Wiener Singakademie and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, with soloist Vojtěch Dyk, in a recording of Bernstein’s Mass. His recorded catalog, issued on Nonesuch, ECM, Tzadik, and other labels, includes a complete cycle of Haydn’s Symphonies with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Glass: Waiting for the Barbarians, Schnittke: Symphony No. 9, and Essential Beethoven. In 2022 he directed the MDR-Sinfonieorchester and MDR-Rundfunkchor in Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony and Serenade to Music. The following year, conducting the Filharmonie Brno at Carnegie Hall, he presented the New York premiere of Glass’ Symphony No. 12 (“Lodger”) with soloist Angélique Kidjo.