More candid, sprawling, bloggier bio for general readership:
**please do NOT use this material for programs, introductions, or any other formal occasions**
William White hails from Bethesda, MD, where he learnt to play the viola in his elementary school music class. He soon figured out enough of the notes on the keyboard to write some modest compositions and from then his path was set. An unexpected chance allowed him to conduct his High School’s Musicals and he nurtured his talent as a music director and conductor in Bethesda’s all-youth Wildwood Summer Theatre.
At the age of 18, a performance of West Side Story under his baton was professionally and critically acclaimed. William attended the University of Chicago, studying music theory, composition and orchestration under the tutelage of Easley Blackwood. While there, he played viola in the Symphony Orchestra, sang tenor in the Motet Choir, and conducted numerous student concerts and theater productions. He graduated in 2005 with honors for his senior thesis composition, Fantasy on “Les Folies d’Espagne”.
During his summers off from the U of C, William studied conducting with Michael Jinbo at the Pierre Monteux School, where he later served as Conducting Associate (and for which he composed three of his children’s pieces, Cinderella Goes to Music School and How to Become a Composer and Carnival of the Animals: MAINE EDITION.) He returned in 2016 and 2018 as the school’s composer-in-residence, and in 2022 as a guest teacher.
After graduating college, he launched his musical career in Chicago. In three years, he held music director posts with the Hyde Park Youth Symphony, the U of C Chamber Orchestra, the Presbyterian Church of Barrington, Rockefeller Chapel, and the Union Church of Hinsdale. During this time, he composed a number of works for a variety of performers, the largest of which was his oratorio for choir, soloists, and orchestra, Thy King Cometh. He produced his own recording of the oratorio during the summer of 2007, with a group of friends, collaborators and freelance musicians, a pattern he would go on to repeat many times.
He then spent two years in Bloomington, IN, at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, studying conducting with David Effron and Arthur Fagen, earning his keep as a music theory instructor and operatic assistant conductor. He frequently returned to Chicago as a pre-concert lecturer for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and to play chamber music with old friends.
May of 2009 saw the first release of his music on a professional record label, Chicago’s Cedille Records. The piece, an a cappella setting of the Nunc Dimittis, was recorded by the Wm. Ferris Chorale under Paul French.
Will then spent four years in Cincinnati, OH as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra. He took the youth orchestra on tours to Chicago and New York (where they played a Carnegie Hall program the likes of which few youth orchestras would imagine: Schnittke(x2) / Prokofiev / White.) Favorite collaborators in Cincinnati included Philip Glass, John Adams, and Jennifer Higdon. While in Cincinnati, he was also music director of the ever-charming Seven Hills Sinfonietta.
Cincinnati ended up being a fertile ground for his efforts as a composer; he composed a symphony for the CSYO and a new children’s work for the 7HS, among several other works. He also continued his many, many side projects as an arranger, a highlight reel of which includes: “They Just Keep Moving the Line” and “Happy” for the Cincinnati Pops; a 13-instrument version of West Side Story for The Carnegie theater; and a symphonic suite from Sweeney Todd.
In August of 2015, Mr. White stepped in for friend and colleague Andrés Lopera when Mr. Lopera was appointed to the Colorado Symphony, and served one season as Interim Music Director of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, in Portland, OR. In June 2016, he took that group on a tour to China. As a parting gesture he arranged “Dear Theodosia” from Hamilton for them, a show then at the height of its popularity.
After his interim year with MYS, Will continued living in Portland working as a composer, producing pieces such as Dans les champs de Valensole (inspired by a summertime road trip through Europe), Nightfall, Recollected Dances, and his largest chamber work to date, the Trio for viola, horn, and piano. While in Portland, he also returned to church music, singing and touring with the choir of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
In August of 2018, Will moved to Seattle, WA to assume his duties as the third ever music director of Harmonia, an extraordinary organization that fuses together a choir and an orchestra as a unified performing ensemble. His first season there featured the music of Lili Boulanger. Favorite collaborator-composers there have included the composers Quinn Mason, Carlos Garcia, Sheila Bristow, Carol Sams, Huntley Beyer, and Robert Kechley.
For Harmonia, Will has composed a variety of large-scale choral-orchestral works: The Muses in 2022, Cassandra in 2023, and Dies Irae in 2025. During the lockdown era, a steady stream of music flowed forth from his pen: a commissioned work for the American Guild of Organists, a passionately depressing choral concerto, a song cycle based on the Instagram captions of Martha Stewart, and a piano sonata.
That last piece, the piano sonata, was written for Joseph Vaz, a young pianist that Will first met when Joseph was a bass player in the CSYO. Their ongoing connection has turned into a particularly fruitful musical partnership, with Joseph having spurred into creation not only the sonata, but also a set of bagatelles and a solo piano suite, all of which ended up on an album released on the Navona label: Galanteries: The Solo Piano Music of William C. White, a major accomplishment for both pianist and composer.
A frequent guest conductor and lecturer, Will White collaborates on a variety of concert, film, and recording projects, including the feature length Mulligan and Cold Turkey, both directed by friend and collaborator, Will Slocombe. His music for 91.7 WVXU‘s “Cincinnati Edition” can be heard in SW Ohio on weekdays at 1:00. In 2016, he orchestrated the entire score of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” for that musical’s national tour and Madison Square Garden runs. Weeks later he was in the Czech Republic collaborating with the Janacek Philharmonic on a recording of his orchestral works.
In 2024, Will experienced a bizarre incident in his professional life as a composer when he discovered that several of his compositions had been plagiarized by a teenaged imposter in the Near East. Another strange occurrence took place in January 2023, when an orchestral concert in Sedona, AZ was snowed out at the last minute, and he replaced a performance of Mendessohn’s Italian Symphony with a solo rendition of his Martha Stewart song cycle. Even more strangely, this led, two years later, to him accepting the music directorship of the Sedona Symphony.
Past extracurricular activities include his YouTube series, Ask A Maestro and his podcast The Classical Gabfest (2020–2022 RIP.) He now publishes the Tone Prose newsletter on Substack along with the aforementioned Joseph Vaz. He is a regular guest on Putting it Together, a podcast that explores the songs of his favorite recently-living composer, Stephen Sondheim. Recently (as of 2025) he’s gotten into teaching both composition and conducting, an activity that is bringing him tremendous pleasure.
White is a committed animal rights advocate and has been a dedicated vegan since 2011.
May 2025
