1 Birth
The African American conductor James DePreist,
http://www.JamesDePreist.com, is the nephew of
the famed contralto Marian Anderson. He was born in
Philadelphia in 1936. While attending the Philadelphia
Conservatory of Music, his website reports, Vincent
Persichetti was his composition professor.
2 First Prize
DePreist contracted polio in 1962 during a State
Department tour to Bangkok, but that misfortune did not
prevent him from taking first prize in the Dmitri
Mitropoulous International Conducting Competition a
short time later.
3 Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein appointed James DePreist as an
assistant conductor during the 1965-66 season. The
website continues:
|
DePreist made his
highly acclaimed European debut with the Rotterdam
Philharmonic in 1969. |
That was also the year
he won a Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant.
4 Antal Dorati
The website tells of
an appointment James DePreist received in 1971:
|
Antal Dorati chose him
to become his Associate Conductor with the National
Symphony in Washington, D.C. |
Bruce Duffie
interviewed Maestro DePreist in 1988. The transcript
contains a number of interesting and candid remarks. It
can be read at the website of Bruce Duffie.
5 Poet
James DePreist has published two volumes of poetry,
The Distant
Siren
(1989), with a foreword by Maya Angelou;
and
This Precipice Garden
(1990).
At
PoetryFoundation.org, one can hear a 39-minute audio
program in which comments on poetry are interspersed
with several very attractive excerpts of music performed
at New York's Lincoln Center by the Juilliard Orchestra
under the direction of Maestro James DePreist.
6 Music Director
Maestro DePreist has been the Music Director of L'Orchestre
Symphonique de Québec, the Mälmo Symphony in Sweden, and
the Oregon Symphony.
His website observes:
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His varied recorded
repertoire includes a celebrated Shostakovich series
with the Helsinki Philharmonic and 15 recordings with
the Oregon Symphony which have helped establish that
orchestra as one of America's finest. |
DePreist led the
Oregon Symphony for 23 years, and remains its Laureate
Conductor.
7
Fanfare
Maestro DePreist has made some 50 recordings.
Music Critic James
Reel wrote a cover article on the conductor's career for
Fanfare
Magazine,
Nov.-Dec., 1995. He quoted James DePreist on the subject
of recording:
|
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. |
8 Ditson Award
Maestro DePreist's performances of works of American
composers was cited by Columbia University as a reason
for his receipt of the 2000 Ditson Conductor's Award:
|
In addition to
inspired performances of standard works, you are
especially admired for your consistent, effective, and
passionate advocacy of music by American composers. In
your tenure with the Oregon Symphony, you have conducted
more than 80 different American works, by more than 50
different composers; many of these performances were
premieres, and many have subsequently been recorded
under your direction. |
9 Juilliard Debut
Mr. DePreist began his association with The Juilliard
School in 1987, according to a subsequent press release,
when he conducted the Juilliard Orchestra with Gil
Shaham as violin soloist in a performance of the
Mendelssohn Concerto. A booster commemorated his 20-year
anniversary with the Oregon Symphony by donating one
million dollars for a 5-year recording project, from
2000 to 2005. Sidelined by a kidney transplant in
December 2001, DePriest returned to the podium the
following March, in a concert attended by his wife
Ginette and his doctors, to whom he expressed his
appreciation.
10 Grammy Nominee
Niel DePonte is a longtime percussionist for the Oregon
Symphony. His website says:
|
Niel DePonte was one
of 2003’s five Grammy Award nominees for Best
Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his
recording of Oregon composer Tomas Svoboda’s
Concerto for Marimba
and Orchestra
conducted by James DePreist and performed by the Oregon
Symphony on Albany Records. |
Among his many other
significant discs is Delos 3278, which features two
important works by Igor Stravinsky,
The Rite of Spring
and The
Firebird Suite.
11 Conducting Director
The Juilliard School issued a press release in February
2004:
|
Conductor James DePreist has been named Director of
Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard
School, beginning with the fall term in 2004. |
From 2005-2008, James
DePreist was Principal Conductor of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra as well. Maestro
DePreist became Artistic Advisor to the Pasadena
Symphony in June 2010. Early in 2011, DePreist
relinquished the position of Director of Conducting and
Orchestral Studies at Juilliard. He continued at
the school as Principal Conductor and Director Emeritus
of Conducting and Orchestral Studies.
12 Guest Conductor
The website of Maestro DePreist recalls a number of his
guest conducting appearances:
|
As a guest conductor
he has appeared with every major North American
orchestra, and internationally he has conducted in
Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Helsinki,
Manchester, Melbourne, Munich, Prague, Rome, Rotterdam,
Seoul, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and
Vienna. He
made
his London
debut with the London Symphony at the Barbican in April
2005. |
13 National Medal
In 2005 James DePreist was notified by the National
Endowment for the Arts that he was to be honored with
the National Medal of Arts for his contribution to
American musical life as a distinguished conductor. He
received the medal in an Oval Office ceremony at the
White House in November, 2005. James DePreist's alma
mater, the
University of Pennsylvania, awarded its first “Creative
Spirit Award” to him in November 2009 in recognition of
his artistic leadership and life-long commitment to the
arts.
14 Bronze Bust
Famed American
sculptor Rip Caswell has produced a bronze bust of James
DePreist:
|
Size and Number:
Mid-Size;
One of a kind.
Dimensions: 24x17x11 inches. Sponsored by friends and
supporters of Maestro James DePreist. |
The home page of Rip
Caswell's website reads:
|
The surprise is the
life he coaxes from this elemental metal. |
15 DePreist Award
The website of Rip Caswell also displays a second bronze
sculpture, Bronze Ironworker, which also carries
the name of James DePreist:
|
Commissioned
by Oregon’s Volunteers of America, the exclusive bronze
DePreist Award is given to those citizens who
demonstrate the highest level of commitment to the
community. |
16 My Country
James DePreist has made a documentary,
My Country, which is
distributed free by the Disability Rights Section, Civil
Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice:
|
In this one-hour
documentary, symphony conductor James DePreist, who
contracted polio as a young man, profiles three people
with disabilities whose lives have been shaped by the
struggle for equal rights. Mr. DePreist is the nephew of
African American contralto Marian Anderson, who in 1939
was prevented from singing at Constitution Hall because
of her race. He draws parallels between racial barriers
and the barriers faced by people with disabilities. |
17 American Music
One of Maestro DePreist's
most enduring contributions is his expansion of the
repertoire of classical performances to include many
more works of American composers than were previously
heard by concert audiences. Another is his vast
library of more than 50 recordings, which preserve many
of the finest performances he has led. James
DePreist has made his highly accomplished conducting
accessible to countless classical music listeners of the
present and future.
18 Death
Maestro James DePreist died on February 8, 2013.
NPR.org posted:
|
Pioneering American conductor, National Medal of Arts
winner and poet James DePreist died early this morning
in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 76 years old. His death, his
manager told Deceptive Cadence, stemmed from
complications following a heart attack he suffered
nearly a year ago. |
The
NPR obituary discussed the polio Maestro DePreist
contracted on a tour of Asia with his jazz quintet,
his introduction to composing on that same tour, and
his later need for a new kidney:
|
DePreist was a survivor of polio,
which he contracted on a 1962 State
Department-sponsored tour to Thailand and which
paralyzed both his legs permanently. Later, DePreist
encountered another significant challenge when he
developed kidney disease in the 1990s and had to go
on dialysis — and remarkably, he received a new
kidney from a devoted fan.
It was on that 1962 Asia tour,
however, that DePreist's professional life took an
unexpected turn. He had been brought by the State
Department to play with his jazz quintet; on
something of a lark, he was invited to conduct a
rehearsal with the Bangkok Symphony. That rehearsal
led to an epiphany, as DePreist told Hurst: "You
feel entirely differently than you felt before,
ever, and you say, 'This is something that I could
really commit my life to. And not only could I, I
would be really bummed if I couldn't."
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