Frances White

Biography

Frances White composes instrumental and electronic music. She is particularly known for her works combining live instruments and computer-generated electronic sound spaces. She studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University. She has received awards, honors, grants and commissions from organizations such as Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France), the International Computer Music Association, Hungarian Radio, ASCAP, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Other Minds Festival, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, The Dale Warland Singers, the American Music Center, The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and The Guggenheim Foundation. She has received resident artist fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Djerassi Resident Artists Program. In 2007, Mode Records released Centre Bridge, a CD devoted to her electroacoustic works. Ms. White’s music has also appeared on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, and Bridge labels. Ms. White’s music was featured as part of the soundtrack of Gus Van Sant’s award-winning films Elephant and Paranoid Park.

Ms. White studies the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), and finds that the traditional music of this instrument informs and influences her work as a composer. Much of Ms. White’s music is inspired by her love of nature, and her electronic works frequently include natural sound recorded around where she lives, in central New Jersey.