Niel DePonte was the Principal Percussionist of the Oregon Symphony from 1977-2020, a post to which he was appointed at the age of 24. He won the first of the Percussive Arts Society’s mock auditions in 1976 where his judges were principal percussionists Alan Able of Philadelphia, John Soroka of Baltimore and Bill Cahn of Rochester. He taught percussion at the National Music Camp at Interlochen Michigan from 1976-1979, heading the percussion department for his last three seasons.
Niel left the Oregon Symphony in 2020 having also played principal timpani for one season with the orchestra as well as drum set for pops and movie shows. He has appeared with the Oregon Symphony and other orchestras as a marimba and percussion soloist, playing a varied repertoire including his own composition, Concertino for Marimba and Orchestra. He has published many articles and reviews for Percussive Notes magazine, the Oregonian newspaper, and Americans for the Arts.
Niel was a 2003 Grammy Award nominee in the category of Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his performance of the Concerto for Marimba by Tomas Svoboda on Albany Records, commissioned for him by James DePreist conducting the Oregon Symphony. He appears on virtually all the Oregon Symphony recordings as principal percussion.
Niel was also the Music Director and Conductor for Oregon Ballet Theatre from 1985 until 2022. A published composer, his works have been performed by the Oregon Symphony, the Eastman Wind Ensemble, the United States Air Force Band, and other ensembles. He has composed, arranged, and edited orchestral scores for use in ballet performance, including a full-length ballet score for Houston Ballet’s 2002 production of Peter Pan and recently recorded that entire ballet score with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra for the 2025 revival of the ballet.
As President of MetroArts Inc (now Cognizart), a non-profit arts education organization he founded in 1993, he did considerable research on the use of the arts for teaching cognitive strategies in the classroom, designed a curriculum that teaches creativity concepts through the media of music, dance, theater, and visual arts, and taught this curriculum at Harvard University’s Project Zero Classroom. He also conducted the Young Artists Debut program for MetroArts Inc from 1995-2021, coaching young musicians in concerto repertoire on all instruments and voice. He retired from MAI in 2021. Niel created his latest non-profit organization, DePonte Creativity Partners (DCP) in 2021 and annually produces The Concerts At The Barn Festival in Beaverton, OR. He recently began a new program for young artists entitled the Young Artists Professional Development Competition where winning high school students rehearse and perform with professional musicians. He now gives master classes nationwide through DCP, most recently at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
Niel holds an Master of Music in Performance and a performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music Education and a performer’s certificate from the State University of New York at Fredonia.