MICHAEL WHITE

Michael White, unrelated to either the New Orleans clarinetist or the funk drummer who share his name, stands among the foremost violinists, educators, composers, arrangers, and performers of his generation. His résumé includes collaborations with leading figures across jazz, R&B, folk, and blues, and his command of the instrument features striking double-stop passages within improvised lines. He has woven into his work elements drawn from Western, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern classical traditions alongside blues, R&B, and the broader jazz lineage. Born in Houston, Texas, in 1933 and raised in Oakland, California, White took up the violin at nine.

His initial prominence came through the John Handy Quintet, whose appearance became a highlight of the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival. In the Bay Area he sat in with the John Coltrane Quartet, performed alongside Eric Dolphy and Wes Montgomery, and joined Sonny Simmons and Prince Lasha for a 1969 engagement later issued by Arhoolie in 2000 as Manhattan Egos. Three albums resulted from his tenure with Handy before he helped establish the early fusion ensemble Fourth Way in the late sixties; the group produced three Capitol releases.

During the early seventies White worked and recorded with Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, and Lightnin’ Hopkins and contributed to the posthumous Coltrane album Infinity. Impulse Records signed him in 1971, yielding five leader dates: Pneuma and Spirit Dance (both 1972), The Land of Spirit and Light (1973), Father Music, Mother Dance (1974), and Go with the Flow (1974). Subsequent sessions paired him with McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson, and he joined Stevie Wonder and Sun Ra for performances in Lagos, Nigeria. Two further albums, X Factor and White Night, appeared on Elektra, yet widespread recognition remained elusive despite his skill at uniting avant-garde jazz, spiritual music, funk, and rock. Throughout the remainder of the seventies, the eighties, and the first half of the nineties he performed regularly in San Francisco with Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, Alice Coltrane, Joe Bonner, Richard Davis, Henry Grimes, Tootie Heath, Philly Joe Jones, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Herbie Lewis, Buddy Montgomery, Eddie Moore, Odean Pope, Gabor Szabo, and Lonnie Liston Smith.

A brief return to wider attention in the mid-nineties included an unrecorded reunion of the Handy Quintet, participation on Sanders’s Message from Home (1995), and the 1996 duet album Motion Picture with Bill Frisell. He also held a teaching post at Cornish Arts College in Washington State. In the new century White assembled a quintet comprising original Impulse associates bassist Cecil McBee and percussionist Kenneth Nash together with guitarist Tim Young and vocalist Leisei Chen; the ensemble recorded Voices in 2004. Kyoto Jazz Massive supplied a remix of “Succession of Spirit” for Gilles Peterson’s Pure Fire! A Gilles Peterson Impulse! Collection, prompting additional reinterpretations by other producers and DJs. Verve reissued a remastered edition of The Land of Spirit and Light in 2005, Wounded Bird restored X Factor and White Night in 2010, and a two-fer pairing Pneuma with Spirit Dance appeared on Verve in early 2012. White maintains studio, concert, and scoring work for television and film, continues performing with Sanders and others, and appears at festivals worldwide while residing in Los Angeles. In 2013 he released T’Aint Nobody’s Business with Chester Zardis.