Dr. Michael White maintains a wide-ranging presence as a New Orleans musician whose profile has remained largely local despite his extensive accomplishments. Serving as musicologist, jazz historian, educator, clarinetist, and bandleader, he brings his ensemble to New York’s Village Vanguard each year for performances clustered around New Year’s Eve. Because of his faculty duties at Xavier University, however, such trips remain infrequent.
He first took up the clarinet in classical contexts before jazz claimed his attention, leading him to perform throughout New Orleans with several brass bands, most prominently the ten-piece unit directed by Doc Paulin. To stabilize the unpredictable earnings of a working musician, White began teaching Spanish at Xavier University in 1980; in later years he has held an endowed chair there devoted to New Orleans music and culture.
Although the blues underpins every aspect of his playing, deeper study of New Orleans traditions and other southern American styles continually prompts him to explore fresh directions with his bandmates.
His clear-toned clarinet appears on Wynton Marsalis’s 1989 Columbia Records release The Majesty of the Blues. More recently White collaborated with Marsalis, jazz artistic director at Lincoln Center, on the concert series A Tribute to Jelly Roll Morton. He also acted as musical director for joint presentations with Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra honoring King Oliver and Sidney Bechet.
White began studying clarinet in childhood yet made his professional debut only in his late teens, performing with Paulin’s brass band. Among his chief influences he lists the New Orleans clarinet lineage of Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Barney Bigard, Paul Barnes, Willie Humphrey, and George Lewis. Although raised on classic R&B and early rock & roll, and briefly acquainted with Benny Goodman during teenage lessons, he remained drawn primarily to the city’s longstanding clarinet heritage.
A decisive moment arrived in 1975 when he first played a George Lewis recording; he listened repeatedly until the grooves wore down and later discovered that a family member had participated in the session.
In 1981 he founded the Original Liberty Jazz Band, which he still leads alongside the Liberty Brass Band and the Michael White Quartet.
For the New Orleans label Basin Street Records he has issued two widely praised albums, Dancing in the Sky (2004) and Jazz from the Soul of New Orleans (2002), each blending blues material with traditional New Orleans jazz selections. An earlier Basin Street project, A Song for George Lewis, appeared in 2000. During the 1990s he recorded New Year’s Eve Live at the Village Vanguard and Crescent City Serenade for Antilles Records.
Since the mid-1990s White has expanded performances of New Orleans jazz and blues clarinet traditions to additional U.S. cities as well as Canada and Europe. He remains equally comfortable whether performing in intimate New Orleans clubs, house parties, or weddings or appearing on formal concert stages.
