Musical Legacy

Niel DePonte

Principal Percussion

When he joined the Symphony as its Principal Percussionist in 1977, Niel DePonte was only twenty-four, which perhaps helps to explain his respect for young performers. This fact doesn't quite go far enough, though, in revealing the passion he brings to all that he does here-as a performer with the Symphony and with Chamber Music Northwest, as the Music Director and Conductor of Oregon Ballet Theatre, and perhaps most of all as an arts advocate and educator.

In 1993, he discovered that a nascent regional arts education program begun by the Portland Center for the Performing Arts (PCPA) was about to be sacrificed to budget cuts. Concerned about this development he helped to convince the Metropolitan Exposition-Recreation Commission (MERC) that the funding needed to be preserved. He then founded MetroArts Inc to develop a new concept in arts education in Portland. He told the MERC commissioners, "I'd like to create a curriculum that enables children to experience the creative processes and thinking skills used to create works of music, dance, theater, and visual arts…and I'll create a strategy to market all of PCPA's summer arts education programs."

"I'd say the most important thing I've been involved in, in the 24 years I've lived in Portland, was the drafting of the first 5-year business plan for PCPA, which put in writing PCPA's and MERC's commitment to arts education" he says. "The public wants and deserves these programs, and they give PCPA an important role in the community. There's a public-private partnership here that really works." MERC, he explains, made sure to include in the business plan the idea that the PCPA facilities would be donated for summer education programs. "It's about giving back to the community," he emphasizes. In addition to the MetroArts Kids Camp, which has enrolled over a thousand kids from all socioeconomic levels in its nine years of existence, MetroArts runs the Young Artists at the Schnitz Concerto Competition, for which DePonte serves as Artistic Director. Each year, sixty performers between eight and twenty-one enter the Concerto Competition, and eventually six to nine of them are accepted as soloists for the final concert; last year's concert included the new Miss America, Katie Harman. "This is the greatest concentration of young musical talent in the area," DePonte says, and despite his other commitments, he coaches each of the soloists for three months, focusing not only on performance, but also on the properties and principles of music that form a soloist's interpretation. (Call 503-245-4885 for information on this year's Young Artists Competition and MetroArts Kids Camp)

DePonte also has a passion for theories about how teaching the arts and creative processes relates to the development of thinking and problem-solving skills. He has lectured to educators from around the world at The Project Zero Classroom seminar at Harvard University. "Basically," he explains, "the idea is that in teaching children to think and problem-solve as an artist thinks and problem-solves when making a new piece of art, you're teaching processes of cognition and creative thinking, as well as aesthetic judgment, that society values when it says it is looking for people to 'think outside the box.'"

He adds, "We never know what will cause a child to take an experience in the arts and turn it into a life and/or career altering event. When listening to my favorite recording at age seven of Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (I sang a mean Maria, then!), I remember being so moved by the music that I began to ask the two questions that forever changed my life-'What is it about music that makes me feel things?' and 'How can I make that beautiful experience happen in the world, over and over, for myself and for everyone else?' I've made a career and, more importantly, a life out of answering those questions."

Niel's colleagues are also benefiting from his interest in the creative processes. The Oregon Symphony has had an ongoing relationship with the Knight foundation since the beginning of the Symphony's innovative Nerve Endings series in 1995. The most recent round of funding, Magic of Music Phase II, supports three initiatives including a Creative Empowerment Project (CEP). The CEP is the brainchild of DePonte, developed during one of the Knight Foundation's annual retreats. Following the Nerve Endings model, the CEP will enable musicians to explore and create performances of their own design. Pilot project/performances will start in Spring 2002.

For information on Oregon Symphony Education and Community Programs, please call 503-228-4294 or e-mail educate@orsymphony.org.

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