James DePreist, 1936–2013

last updated 8 January 2015

The U.S. State Department sent James DePreist to Thailand in 1962 to perform with his jazz quintet. The trip changed the trajectory of his life. It was there that he contracted polio, which left his legs paralyzed. But it was also there that, thanks to an impromptu invitation to conduct the Bangkok Symphony, DePreist had the epiphany that conducting would be his life’s work. It was, he later said, “that kind of revelatory experience that we read about and hope for.”

By then, DePreist already had an ironclad classical pedigree, said The New York Times. Born in Philadelphia, he studied with composer Vincent Persichetti, and his aunt was the contralto Marian Anderson, who stirred the nation with her 1939 performance at the Lincoln Memorial and was the first black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, said NPR.org. DePreist called her “simultaneously the most humble person I ever met in my life and the most powerful.”

After winning a prestigious conducting contest in 1964, DePreist came under the wing of Leonard Bernstein, said the Los Angeles Times. He made his European debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic in 1969, and led orchestras in Quebec, Monte Carlo, Sweden, and Tokyo, where he became a character in a manga comic. In 1980, he was named director of the Oregon Symphony in Portland, said CincinnatiEnquirer.com, building it over the next quarter century “from a part-time regional orchestra to one of major status.” DePreist made more than 50 recordings, wrote two books of poetry, and was director of conducting at the Juilliard School.