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\u2018This is the very model of a modern music festival\u2019. As he rounded off his speech with these words, playing on the Major-General\u2019s Song<\/a><\/strong> from Gilbert and Sullivan<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s The Pirates of Penzance<\/em>, Sir Andrew Davis, who has died aged 80, put his own indelible stamp on Last Night of the Proms<\/a><\/strong> history. <\/p> This, in September 1992, was the fourth occasion on which Davis had conducted the famous occasion \u2013 he would lead the way in 12 in total, a number beaten only by Sir Malcolm Sargent<\/strong><\/a> and Sir Henry Wood<\/a><\/strong> himself.<\/p> A gregarious, vivacious character with a perpetual glint in his eye, Davis was the ideal conductor for the Last Night of the Proms, but there was, of course, much more to him than that, and his long career saw him enjoy acclaim \u2013 plus friends galore \u2013 in concert halls, opera houses<\/a><\/strong> and recording studios on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p> Born and brought up in Hertfordshire, he began his musical life by playing the organ at his local parish church and then at the Palace Theatre in Watford as a teenager, before studying at the Royal Academy of Music and then winning an organ scholarship to King\u2019s College, Cambridge. Further studies at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia<\/a><\/strong> in Rome paved the way to appointments as assistant conductor at the BBC Scottish Symphony and Philharmonia orchestras in the early 1970s.<\/p>