James DePreist appears regularly at the Aspen Music Festival, with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, the
Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center, and the Juilliard orchestras at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
With more than fifty recordings to his credit, he has a substantial presence in the recording arena. His varied
recorded repertoire includes a celebrated Shostakovich series with the Helsinki Philharmonic and fifteen recordings
with the Oregon Symphony which have helped establish that orchestra as one of America’s finest. 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
début 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.
James DePreist has been awarded thirteen honorary
doctorates and is the author of two books of poetry. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and is a recipient of the Insignia of Commander of the Order of
the Lion of Finland, the Medal of the City of Québec and is an Officer of the Order of Cultural Merit of Monaco. In
2005 the President of the United States presented James DePreist with the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s
highest honour for artistic excellence. He is the nephew of the legendary contralto Marian Anderson.
For more information, please go to www.jamesdepreist.com.
