Michael White

In Memoriam | March 6, 1931-January 24, 2022

Graduate Studies faculty member Michael White was born in Chicago. He is the recipient of three Ford Foundation Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, awards and grants from the Soros Foundation, Fell Foundation, William Penn Foundation, Columbia University, Unesco, Oberlin Conservatory, and ASCAP. He has given lectures for the New York Philharmonic, the New York Youth Symphony, and for festivals in Bowdoin, Maine; Charlottesville, Va.; and Rockport, Mass., among others. He is a former faculty member of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Philadelphia Musical Academy, where he is chairman of the theory and composition department. Operas he has composed have been produced in Seattle (The Dybbuk), in Philadelphia (The Metamorphosis), in London (Through the Looking Glass), and in Riga, Latvia (Diary of a Madwoman). There have been many performances of his chamber and vocal works in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Chicago. White studied at Oberlin Conservatory and Chicago Musical College. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from Juilliard, where his composition teachers included Peter Mennin and Vincent Persichetti. White has been a Juilliard faculty member since 1979 and an Evening Division faculty member since 1991.