News Flash Archives
Columbia University in the City
of New York
2000 Ditson Conductor's Award
James DePreist
Your conducting career has featured guest appearances throughout the world, as well as
positions with the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington,
D.C., and the Quebec Symphony. You have served as Music Director of the Oregon Symphony
since 1980 and rapidly built it from an important regional orchestra to one worthy of
national attention.
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.
For this devotion to the cause of American music, often by younger or less well-known
composers, Columbia University is honored to present you with the Ditson Conductor's Award
for 2000.
George Rupp
President
November 1, 2000
Oregon
Symphony Gets $1 Million
By Susan Elliott
Musical America.com
March 23, 2001
PORTLAND – The Oregon Symphony
and its music director James DePreist are the recipients of a $1 million grant designated
specifically for recording. The monies will
be used to establish the Gretchen Brooks Recording Fund, named for its donor.
“I am very proud of this
orchestra and what it has become under Jimmy’s leadership,” Brooks is quoted as
saying, “and I wanted to honor them in a meaningful way.”
The gift, also a nod to
DePreist’s 20th anniversary with the orchestra, gives the music director
complete artistic freedom over record label, producer, repertoire, venue, and even medium.
“There is much discussion of the
future modality of the dissemination of recorded symphonic music in the era of the
Internet,” said DePreist. “But
whatever the eventual dominant technology, it will require state-of-the-art recorded
material. The gift affords us (that
opportunity and) allows us the luxury of recording with complete artistic freedom.”
DePreist has chosen the following
repertoire:
Walton: Symphony No. 1; Cello Concerto, with
16-year-old soloist Samuel Jackson
Persichetti: Symphony No. 4
Dougherty: “Hell’s
Angels,” for four bassoons and orchestra
John LaMontaine: “Wilderness
Journal,” based on the writings of Thoreau
André Previn: Piano
Concerto with André Watts.
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