James DePreist, newly appointed Permanent Conductor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the Julliard School and Laureate Music Director of the Oregon Symphony. Widely esteemed as one of America's finest conductors, James DePreist, during the past three decades has served as Music Director of L'Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Sweden's Malmö Symphony, L'Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo and the Oregon Symphony.

Born in Philadelphia in 1936, he studied composition with Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1962, while on a State Department tour in Bangkok, he contracted polio but recovered sufficiently to win a first prize in the Dimitri Mitropoulous International Conducting Competition. He was selected by Leonard Bernstein to be an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1965-66 season. DePreist made his highly acclaimed European debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in 1969. In 1971 Antal Dorati chose him to become his Associate Conductor with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C.

Recording for me is absolutely essential. What we do as musicians normally evaporates as soon as it's created. That's the nature of concerts.