Gareth Davies

"I saw Solti conduct the LSO when I was at college in 1992: Mozart's Haffner Symphony and Maher Symphony No 5. It was breathtaking. I knew then that I simply had to play in this extraordinary group of musicians."

Gareth Davies is one of the flautists of his generation. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and joined the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra as Principal Flute after graduating. After five years on the south coast, he joined the London Symphony Orchestra where he has been Principal Flute for 21 years. He has recorded several solo works including the Nielsen, Karl Jenkins and Knehans concertos and can be heard on many LSO Live recordings including two versions of Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune with Valery Gergiev and François-Xavier Roth, as well as Daphnis and Chloe. In the studio, he appears on several of the Harry Potter and Star Wars soundtracks as well as many other film and TV shows.

He is in demand as a teacher around the world, is currently visiting professor at the Guildhall and has given regular classes in Tokyo, New York, Beijing and the Galway Academy in Weggis.

Gareth is also in demand as a presenter and writer. He has written and presented programmes on Classic FM and BBC Radio 3 and has interviewed many people from the classical music world for broadcast including Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, Sir Simon Rattle and Thomas Adès.

His writing has featured in BBC Music Magazine and several newspapers, and his first book The Show Must Go On was a book of year in the Financial Times and Classical Music magazine.

He also writes education material for LSO Discovery to help introduce young people to classical music, including Game Over, Voyager and his pandemic-inspired digital project Where’s Simon, which is still available to watch online. His latest project for LSO Discovery, The Disappearance of Doctor Copernicus, will be performed in May 2022.