Sir Andrew Davis & Ed Frazier Davis at the conclusion of a performance of “Mother and Child” at Lyric/Photo: Kyle Flubacker

As son of late conductor Sir Andrew Davis and late soprano Gianna Rolandi, composer, baritone and conductor Ed Frazier Davis grew up uniquely immersed in the worlds of classical music and opera.

Born in England in 1989, Ed moved with his parents to Chicago when Davis became music director of Lyric Opera in 2000. In 2002, Rolandi became director of vocal studies of what was then called the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. In 2006, she became director of what had been renamed the Ryan Opera Center.

“I grew up at Lyric,” Ed recalls. “From very shortly after we moved to the States, I was involved in a few productions. I was in the children’s chorus with what was then called the Chicago Children’s Choir [now known as Uniting Voices Chicago] in ‘Tosca.’ I was eleven years old for that. We also did ‘La bohème,’ which was great. You know, that one little scene in Act Two. And then there was some other opera we sang that I can’t remember right now.

“But the big role I had was as the cabin boy in ‘Billy Budd.’ I think that was late 2001, so I was probably twelve. It was a lot of fun! Both to have a role on the stage there and to work with Dad, who was conducting it. I got to share the stage with Kim Begley and Sam Ramey and Nathan Gunn. It was really an early formative experience. I’d grown up with classical music, obviously, since I could comprehend what it was. But it was really a significantly more special event to be on the stage at Lyric with Dad and everything.

“There was a story that Dad liked to tell where I can’t remember who, and I probably shouldn’t name names anyway. But one of the main cast members got off by a beat or two somewhere, and I apparently came in with my part totally on time. And my dad said afterward, ‘Wow. You were rhythmically right on there, even when—whoever it was—was off.’ And I said, ‘Well, Dad, I listened to the orchestra.’ He was so proud of that because how many singers had he worked with in his life who would say, ‘I can’t really hear the orchestra that well.’ And here I was, a twelve-year-old, saying I could hear the orchestra totally fine.

“So that was my performing with the Lyric. But outside of that, I would go backstage into the rehearsal department and enter his dressing room just to see him before or after shows. And I would go to a fair amount of shows. I was a child and I had my own interests outside of the opera, obviously, but I still went fairly often.

“A lot of the people who were there around that time became familiar. The Masons, obviously, Bill and Diana Mason [then general director and his wife], and [then chorus master] Donald Palumbo. And in the rehearsal department, I remember speaking with [production administrator] Marina Vecci pretty often, so I really did grow up with those people. Going in there and seeing familiar faces and getting to see all these shows as my dad’s relationship with the orchestra flourished and grew, made a deep impression.”

Sir Andrew Davis & Family, 1996/Courtesy Ed Frazier Davis

It seems like Ed may well have been the perfect age to soak all of this in.

“Yeah, I think I was. Absolutely. This was a time when I was eleven and twelve, sixth and seventh grade for me. And I had just moved to the country and was the foreign kid and was very awkward, you know? I wasn’t exactly thriving at school necessarily, but being that age and being backstage and getting to see my dad’s work like that, it was kind of like… how should I put this? Not like a retreat necessarily, but it was just a really nice place to be. And you’re right, it was at a point developmentally for me that was ideal, for sure. I definitely owe a large deal of my musical success, prowess, whatever you want to call it, to genetics perhaps, but also to being exposed to all of that from that age. I think it certainly informed what would later become my compositional voice, certainly. And also my ear and all of that. It was definitely at a crucial and formative time that I got to experience all of that.”

A perusal of compositions by Ed posted online includes songs and liturgical settings for chorus.

“I would say the ensembles for which I have the most affinity for are definitely choirs. And not necessarily liturgical. I certainly have written plenty of sacred music, for sure. But that doesn’t necessarily reflect my own religious views. I’ve grown up with church music and I’ve gone through periods of spirituality and periods of non-spirituality. I definitely am equally comfortable writing secular music as well as sacred music. I think most of the works of which I’m most proud are secular.”

Ed is also an accomplished writer and wordsmith, much as his father was.

“I actually attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois with the initial intent of pursuing a creative writing degree because I wanted to avoid music. My unhealthy thinking at the time was, ‘Well, why bother going into music if I’m not going to ever be as successful as either of my parents?’ But thankfully, my love for music shone through and I did it anyway. But I had a keen eye for writing, too.”

Of all the choices Ed had given his talents, pedigree and upbringing, how was it that composition became his primary muse?

“I think partially it was an organic synthesis of my interest in prose writing and my developing musical ear. What first inspired me to compose was when I was in the Knox College Choir, which was actually a transformative experience in and of itself.

“In my first concert there we did Bach’s ‘Singet dem Herrn’ motet, you know, this big fifteen-minute a cappella double choir Bach masterpiece. And we also did Frank Martin’s ‘Mass for Double Chorus.’ I don’t know if you know that piece, but it is gorgeous. So we did challenging repertoire that was harmonically inventive, really compelling and just overall, in my estimation, really high-quality music. After joining the choir, my new obsession was choral music of that kind of quality.

“And so I immersed myself in recordings, as I think budding composers do: just listening to a lot of music, you know?

“And then I took an English literature course at Knox that was not English as in England, it was actually American literature. Thanks to that class, I discovered some poetry by Emily Dickinson.

“One day while I was reading one of her poems, I had these musical ideas come into my head while I was reading. I thought, ‘Okay, I should try writing this down.’ And I did. And that very gradually developed into my first piece, which was a setting of her poem, ‘I heard a Fly buzz—when I died.’ I wrote that in 2009.

“I gave it to Laura Lane, who was then the director of the Knox College Choir. And for the first time in, I think at least a decade or maybe two, she said, ‘Okay, this student’s piece is actually pretty good. Let’s do it.’ We ended up not performing it, unfortunately, because she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after that. She’s fine now, she beat it, but we didn’t do the piece.

“But we did actually program a different piece that I wrote the following year; in fact, we did two pieces of mine. She programmed a piece that I wrote in memory of my dad’s father who passed away in 2010, a short a cappella setting of the ‘Requiem aeternam’ text.”

Did Ed’s parents come to these performances?

“Oh yeah. Knox was three hours away but my dad especially tried to come whenever he could, which, given his schedule, was maybe about half of the concerts that I ever was a part of. That was a really great testament to the kind of guy he was. And my mom would come too, but it was during my time at Knox that she first got diagnosed with lymphoma so she became limited in some ways.

“Knox is a very small liberal arts school, so there was no composition degree. I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in music. But I did an honors project in composition where I composed an a cappella ‘Missa brevis.’

“I took a year off and wrote some more and then went to Roosevelt for my master’s and then took another year off and kept writing all that time. And then I went to Kansas City to pursue a doctoral degree, which I did start, but then about a year and a half into it, I realized that academia at that level was not really a requirement for me to do what I wanted to do, which is what I do now, which is freelance work.”

Sir Andrew Davis & Gianna Rolandi/Photo: Dan Rest

When Gianna Rolandi passed away in 2021, Ed composed an orchestral piece in her memory called “Mother and Child,” written for her Celebration of Life Concert at Lyric Opera that was conducted by Sir Andrew Davis.

“Mom passed on June 20, 2021 and about a month later, I started writing ‘Mother and Child’ after we started to make preliminary plans for what that concert for her would look like.

“It was finished three weeks before the concert, so overall it was like a four-month process. For me, that is a bit slow, but it was obviously a very significant piece. It portrays me and my mom’s relationship in several stages. There are five sections, each one representing one part of our life together.

“The first section is the first ten years or so of my life. It’s very lively and cheerful and it represents a happy-go-lucky childhood.

“The second movement is a little more serious in tone, but still as radiant maybe in character. It depicts the years that I was off at college. And as I gradually turned into a young man, her being proud of that.

“And then the third section is more intimate. That one is just oboe, harp and strings and it depicts our relationship right around the time when she was first diagnosed with lymphoma, as I mentioned. That section is depicting the first time in my life where I truly saw my mom as someone who is mortal. I think all children think of their parents as immortal early in their lives.

“The fourth section depicts the final forty-eight hours of her life, almost all of which my dad and I spent at her side in the hospital. They took her off life support and she hung on for like another day, basically, as if she kept fighting. This section depicts those final hours we were with her and it’s very sorrowful and cathartic. The big climax of the piece is like a lament, very wailing.

“And then the final section is the month since she had departed and the messy, complicated nature of the grief that I experienced and to some degree, still experience.

“It ends on an ambiguous note, with a single note in the upper violins, which I chose to represent as kind of a question mark, the question being, ‘Will I ever see her again?’ So, that’s the piece.”

“Mother and Child” has received three performances since, including a performance at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, where Sir Andrew Davis was music director from 1975-1988 and interim artistic director from 2018-2020. Davis conducted the work there in November 2023, less than five months before he would pass away from leukemia on April 20, 2024.

“A Concert Celebrating the Life of Sir Andrew Davis” will take place February 15 at Lyric Opera. “Mother and Child” will be performed as part of the program.

“Lyric advertised that I would be writing a new piece in my dad’s memory for this concert. I indeed intended to, that was the plan. But there were a variety of circumstances that led me to realize I couldn’t possibly complete it in time.

“This piece would be in memory of my last surviving parent and there was a more robust orchestration available to use. So I started it as a piece for triple winds with a larger divisi in the strings and larger percussion and all that.

“But I realized at one point that I was experiencing a rather severe writer’s block spell, which one does have now and then, as you know. And so I took that time to zoom out and look at the piece as a whole and realized that it was not very authentic.

“I think I was trying too hard to sound like what I considered to be a better composer. I was trying all these orchestral timbres and techniques that I wouldn’t necessarily say are representative of my more authentic, or most authentic style. I was trying too hard to force this thing.

Sir Andrew Davis/Photo: Peter Tarasiuk

“And I realized that this was a piece for Andrew Davis. This was a piece for my dad. I really wanted to let this thing grow organically without trying to force it too hard and without having to worry about a deadline. So I’m going to just work on it over the course of the next months, years, whatever. There’s no deadline. I’m going to write that piece when it comes organically and when I feel ready to write it.

“And in the meantime, I’m honestly glad that we’re doing ‘Mother and Child’ because I think it is a very authentic piece. It’s very sincere. It’s not particularly adventurous in the sense of a modern twenty-first-century composer. It is largely tonal and there is sort of a sentimentality to it. But I am very proud of it. It’s very representative of my truest style, I think. So I’m really glad we’re doing it. I’m also glad we’re including it because it honors both of my parents. This is obviously a celebration of my dad’s life, but my mom was a crucial part of his life.”

Artists performing at the tribute concert to Sir Andrew Davis include soprano Christine Goerke, soprano Amanda Majeski, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong, tenor Stuart Skelton, bass-baritone Christian Van Horn and bass John Relyea, along with members of the Ryan Opera Center and the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Lyric music director Enrique Mazzola and guest conductor Francesco Milioto.

“I won’t necessarily say what specific pieces we’re doing, but we’ve got music of Bizet, Dvorák, Elgar, of course, because Dad was a big Elgarian. There’s Strauss, Richard Strauss. We’re doing a chorus from ‘The Rake’s Progress’ by Stravinsky. There’s some Mahler on there. Oh, and there’s definitely going to be an excerpt from the ‘Messiah’ and I’m ninety-five-percent sure we’re using Dad’s orchestration for that. Because you know, we have to. I will also reveal that I am going to be singing at the concert, but what exactly I’m doing is a surprise.

“Everything is very special to him and to his career. We had to include Elgar because he was, as I said, an Elgar aficionado. He gave the world premiere of the posthumously finished Third Symphony, as you probably know.

“There are pieces that were meaningful both to him and in some cases, to the performers who are singing them. The piece that Christine Goerke is doing, I know that she mentioned that she had done it with Dad and had a really special memory of that. So it’s a very special night for the celebration of him and of those he worked with whose lives he changed.

“Dad was really one of a kind. I mean, there’s, there’s so many conductors out there as I know, you know, that are just brutes or tyrants or assholes on the podium. And he was genuinely none of those things. His whole M.O. was that he wanted everyone he worked with from the stagehands to the biggest name soloists, to really be thankful to make music for a living and to have a good time doing it. And to really be proud of the work that they made together.

“It was never just about him. Dad would set the standards and enforce them strongly. But at the same time, he would get out of the way. He would say, ‘Okay, I trust you. Let’s make good music together.’ And then they did. And they loved him for it. He was really special.”

Has Ed been able to get some perspective since Sir Andrew has passed as to how he is going to be remembered?

“Obviously, I’m a bit biased, but I really think he’ll be remembered as one of the greats. He was already renowned as one of the greats while he was alive.

“I think it speaks to his character and to his musicianship that over a long career, he didn’t have very many posts. The posts that he held were long relationships. He was at Toronto from 1975-1988 and then he was at Glyndebourne and the BBC from 1988 to 2000 and then at Lyric for twenty-one years.

“I think he’ll be remembered as a conductor who not only got incredible results from a musical standpoint but also was a person who valued community and the communal aspect of music making. Collaboration was definitely a high priority for him. He saw people as people first. He greatly respected everyone’s abilities and cherished that. If he was impressed with a player or with a certain orchestra sound, he would let the musicians know.

“But he was also the kind of guy that you could have a smoke break with or talk about whatever. He’ll be remembered by those who knew him—which is no small number of people, by the way—as a very kind and genuine man.

“And to those who didn’t know him, I think he’ll be remembered as one of the best-ever interpreters of English music. Certainly, twentieth-century English music was perhaps the music for which he had the strongest affinity. But at the same time, he also was great at pretty much everything else, too.

“He wasn’t particularly as well versed with some other things such as Baroque music and before that, maybe, but obviously before that there was not really much in the way of orchestra music. One of his favorite pieces of music ever composed was Thomas Tallis’ ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah.’ So he even had a great fondness for music from before the dawn of orchestras.

“Dad gave many world premieres, including my personal favorite, you know, this is not necessarily his favorite, but my favorite of his world premieres was James MacMillan’s ‘Quickening.’ I got to sing it with the Grand Park Chorus back in 2016. It’s just an amazing piece and it’s a devil to perform. It’s really challenging for conductor, orchestra, singers, for everybody.”

Sir Andrew Davis & Family/Courtesy Ed Frazier Davis

How does Ed remember Sir Andrew Davis as a father?

“He was just a normal guy. That may seem like a silly answer in some ways, but he was a very good father. He was always very busy. He always worked hard. He cared a lot about what he did. But in spite of all that, he always found time for me and my mom.

“When he was traveling, he would always find time for a phone call, almost every day, if possible. And on those phone calls, it was never surface-level stuff. He always was palpably curious as to how I’m doing, how my day was, what I have been up to. He never just went through the motions.

“I knew he was this renowned guy growing up. But at the same time, he was just a regular guy. He made fart jokes like the rest of us, you know what I mean? He was so down to earth. And whimsical and wonderful in every way.”

“A Concert Celebrating the Life of Sir Andrew Davis” is on February 15, at 7:30pm, at Lyric Opera House, 20 North Wacker Drive (at Madison); tickets are free, but reservations are required via lyricopera.org.