Maurice Peress

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Maurice Peress (born March 18, 1930 in New York City , † December 31, 2017 ) was an American conductor and arranger.

Life

Peress, who played cornet , studied musicology at New York University . From 1953 he did his military service as a musician in order to teach at New York University; he also studied conducting at the Mannes School of Music . In 1961 he became Leonard Bernstein's assistant as conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra . In the following twenty years he directed three American orchestras: the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1974, the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1972 and the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra from 1974 to 1980 . During this time he worked with musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman , André Watts and Garrick Ohlsson , Alan Titus and Jessye Norman , the Modern Jazz Quartet and Jon Faddis ' Carnegie Hall Jazz Band .

In 1971, Peress conducted the world premiere of Bernstein's Mass on the occasion of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, and in 1981 the German-language premiere with the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera . Since 1984 Peress has reconstructed several historic concerts in American music history: the first was the Aeolian Hall Concert from 1924, at which Gershwin premiered his Rhapsody in Blue . In 1989 he performed three historic concerts in Carnegie Hall : the Clef Club Concert of 1912, which was the first concert in the house played only by colored musicians, George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique of 1927, and Duke Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige Concert by 1943. He arranged several works by Ellington for symphony orchestras and recorded them with the American Composers Orchestra and guest soloists such as Frank Wess , Roland Hanna and Ron Carter . He also completed Ellington's musical Queenie Pie .

In 1996, Peress became Principal Guest Conductor of the Shanghai Radio Symphony Orchestra . In 1997 he performed My Fatherland with the Brno Symphony Orchestra Bedřich Smetanas ; In 1999 he recorded the music for the documentary Dvořák in America with the Prague Radio Orchestra . In the same year he gave a concert with works by Ellington with Jessye Norman and the Barbican Center Orchestra in London. In 2000 he conducted a gala concert in honor of Gershwin for Rai Uno .

In addition, Peress worked with several important orchestras from the Far East: he conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (1980), the Chunjo Orchestra and the Changjo Orchestra in South Korea (1996) and undertook several concert tours through China (2003–05), with the opera orchestra of Shanghai, conducted the Chinese National Symphony and the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

Since 1984 Peress has taught conducting at the Aaron Copland School of Music . His autobiographical book Dvořák to Duke Ellington A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press . Most recently, he was music director of the New Britain Symphony from 2010 to 2014 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History on: New Britain Symphony
personal data
SURNAME Peress, Maurice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor and arranger
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 2017