He Has the Music in Him

Though famed American contralto Marian Anderson was his aunt, conductor James DePreist never thought he’d go into the business himself.

“The family had given at the office, so to speak,” DePreist said recently. “But music was such fun, in vocational terms. I had studied piano when I was young, like everyone else, then timpani and percussion. But everything I was doing was avocational. I planned to be a lawyer.”

DePreist, 63, was speaking by phone from Monte Carlo, his home for part of the year while he works as music director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, the orchestra he will conduct Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The rest of the year he’s either in Eugene, Ore., where he’s music director of the Oregon Symphony, or guest conducting around the world.

Though he studied law, DePreist realized at graduation that he didn’t want to be a lawyer. So he continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in his hometown of Philadelphia, getting a master’s degree in arts.

“I studied composition with Vincent Persichetti at the Philadelphia Conservatory,” DePreist said. “Were I to pursue music as a career, I thought then, it would be as a composer.”

But he was still undecided at 26. He needed some career advice. “So I asked Aunt Marian if she could arrange for me just to talk with [Leonard Bernstein], which she kindly did.”

This was right after DePreist had been drafted by the State Department as “a music specialist” to go to Bangkok, Thailand.

“The king of Thailand wanted someone conversant with jazz,” DePreist said. “I got some arrangements from Quincy Jones and took them there. Also, he was interested in symphonies.

“Bernstein said, ‘This is great. In the course of this tour, you’ll find all you can do and the one thing you cannot do without.’

“Which is exactly what happened.

“When I first had the opportunity to conduct in Bangkok in 1962, it was that kind of revelatory experience that we read about and hope for: ‘This is it.’

“That’s [also] when I contracted polio. I had this double whammy: finding exactly what I wanted to do but not knowing if I could walk again.”

He returned to the U.S. and wrote to Bernstein, who urged him to continue conducting.

“I got my braces and crutches, and I entered the [Dimitris] Mitropoulos [International Conducting] Competition” in Athens. “That was in 1963. I thought, ‘This is so improbable.’ But I was so excited about conducting.”

He reached the semifinals. An encouraging letter from Bernstein indicated that the judges had been impressed but thought he needed more experience.

“That letter kept me going.”

A year later, he returned to the prestigious competition and took first place. He then served for a season as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein. He moved to Europe in 1967 when he made his European debut conducting the Rotterdam Philharmonic.

But for DePreist, who is black, the decision was not based on race.

“Like many other Americans, I had to go to Europe,” he said. “This was before the era of James Levine and other successful American conductors” who didn’t have to go abroad to jump-start their careers.

Besides, “Barriers were not anything I really thought of both because of my religious faith and the example of Aunt Marian. The barriers were real. But in our family, we never thought of any barrier as being significant if we were determined and prepared. It was just a temporary obstacle.”

*

DePreist had recovered sufficiently to be able to walk with crutches. “Then I got that down to a cane. There was no frame of reference for anyone sitting to conduct. I tried the best I could to stand, though it was dangerous.”

One day he was conducting in Stockholm with violin soloist Itzak Perlman, who had been stricken with polio when he was 4.

“He asked me, ‘Why are you standing up?’ I had no good reason, and from that point on, I sat to conduct, and it was tremendously freeing and a different world. I don’t hesitate to remind people of who told me that. That was liberating advice from someone who had no choice.”

DePreist became music director of the Oregon Symphony in 1980 and music director of the Monte Carlo Philharmonic in 1994. He is also principal guest conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and much in demand with other orchestras, and jets from continent to continent.

“It goes with the territory,” he said. “It means planning in advance. The only reason it’s possible is that in my position here, there is no fund-raising involved, none of the ancillary nonartistic things people have to do to raise money, as is the role with American orchestras. That is a luxury here.”

DePreist describes the Monte Carlo ensemble as one “whose subtleties are quite captivating. If one could classify it in terms of wine, it’s not necessarily a rich, dark variety Bordeaux, but certainly an exquisite wine for a lighter palate.”

He sees his role as a conductor as allowing him leeway in interpreting a score.

“One has to bring one’s individual feelings interpretively to what one’s doing,” he said. “One needs to be able to make a difference from other interpretations. One can do it in a way that does not violate the intentions of the composer.

“You can put your feelings in support of what the composer has done, but you should not supplant the composer’s will with your ego.”

* James DePreist will conduct the Monte Carlo Philharmonic in music of Berlioz, Beethoven and Shostakovich on Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Ignat Solzhenitsyn will be the soloist in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. 3 p.m. $15-$45. (714) 556-2787.