Maurice Peress papers, 1898-1923, 1950s-2017

Maurice Peress (born March 18, 1930 in New York City, died December 31, 2017, also in New York City) was an American orchestra conductor, arranger, educator and author. After serving as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein beginning in 1961, Peress went on to be conductor of the orchestra in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1962. In 1970, he also became conductor for two years of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In 1974, he left Texas to take over the Kansas City Philharmonic, where he remained until 1980.

As a conductor, he was especially proud to have conducted a number of world premieres, including Leonard Bernstein's Mass, that opened the Kennedy Center in 1971, Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel, and David Amram's Autobiography for Strings.

In 1984, he became a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, teaching conducting and leading the college orchestra to great acclaim, and establishing a Master of Arts degree in conducting there. He remained on the faculty until his death in 2017.

In addition, he conducted orchestras internationally, including the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in 1980, the Vienna State Opera in 1981, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia of Rome in 1988, the Brno Orkester of the Czech Republic in 1997, the FOK Orkester at the Prague Spring Festival in 1988, the Shanghai Radio and Television Orchestra in 1996-97, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1998, and the Barbican Centre Orchestra in London in 1999. In the 2000s, he toured extensively in China, leading the Shanghai Opera Orchestra, the China National Symphony in Beijing and the Shenzhen Symphony. From 2010 to 2014 he served as the music director and conductor of the New Britain Symphony Orchestra in New Britain, Connecticut.

Peress was the author of Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots, published in 2004 by Oxford University Press, and a memoir, Maverick Maestro, published in 2015. The archive includes some notes for a third unpublished book on conducting. As he wrote, "All the stories in my book are about the transfer of the center of creative power from Europe to America, Dvorak being the prophet and Ellington its fulfillment."

Maurice Peress worked extensively with Duke Ellington, orchestrating and revising a number of works including "Black, Brown and Beige," "Harlem," "New World A'Comin," and "Queenie Pie," a musical that remained unfinished at Ellington's death in 1974.

In July 1989 for Carnegie Hall's Landmark Jazz Concerts series he recreated the 1943 Carnegie Hall debut concert of Ellington and his orchestra, James Reese Europe's Clef Club Orchestra Carnegie Hall concert from May 2, 1912, the first all-Black concert given in Carnegie Hall, and George Antheil's Carnegie Hall concert from April 10, 1927 that included Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique" for eight pianists, pianola player, and percussion battery. In February 2014, at Town Hall, Peress marked the 90th anniversary of the Aeolian Hall concert which had included the world premiere of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" by restaging it.