Peter G Davis, New York Magazine critic, dies at age 84

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter G. Davis, the longtime classical music critic of New York Magazine, has died at age 84.

Davis died Saturday at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York after a brief illness, said Scott Parris, his husband since 2009 and partner for 41 years. Davis had sustained a stroke in 2018.

Davis was New York’s music critic for 26 years until the position was eliminated in 2007.

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, Davis grew up in Lincoln and Cambridge. He was a 1958 graduate of Harvard who majored in music and received a master’s degree from Columbia in composition in 1962.

Davis was classical music editor of the Sunday arts and leisure pages for The New York Times in the 1970s and ‘80s. He also wrote for The Times of London, Musical America, High Fidelity and Opera News.

Davis authored the 1987 book: “The American Opera Singer: The Lives and Adventures of America’s Great Singers in Opera and Concert, from 1825 to the Present.”

A memorial will be planned after the coronavirus pandemic eases, Parris said.