Maurice Peress (March 18, 1930 – December 31, 2017) was an American orchestra conductor, educator and author.
After serving as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein beginning in 1961, Peress went on to stand as leader of the orchestra in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1962.
In 1984, he became a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College.
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.
[1] Peress worked with Ellington in revising the ending of Black, Brown and Beige, which he debuted with the American Jazz Orchestra in 1988.