JOHN WHITE
Composer
EVENT: The Many Hands of John White
Saturday 18 April 2026 at St Mary at Hill
Lovat Lane, London EC3R 8EE
6.00pm & 7.30pm
A concert celebration for John White’s 90th birthday, centering on piano duets performed by some of his closest colleagues.
Plus additional exotica and wonderments such as an overture (to an opera that featured a young Pierce Brosnan), an organ toccata, and more...
Performed by Dave Smith, Ian Gardiner, Rob Grassie, Mary Dullea, Christopher Hobbs, Mark Viner and Tammas Slater.
Plus an additional early programme featuring the ambient, expansive system-based Piano Sonata No. 47 (1969), here given its premiere, performed by Tim Parkinson
.
6.00pm PRE-CONCERT FREE EVENT
Piano Sonata No. 47 (1969) Premiere
Tim Parkinson
7.30pm MAIN CONCERT
Overture to Stanley and the Monkey-King (1975)
Edwardian Snapshots (1979)
Scherzo/Street Music from Les Enfants du Paradis (1995)
Photo-Finish Machine (1972)
Yet Another Exercise (1972)
Piano Duets 1st Set (1974–5)
Toccata for Organ (1961)
Piano Duets 2nd Set (1975)
Untitled Duet dedicated to Ian Lake (1966)
Rob Grassie, Dave Smith, Christopher Hobbs, Ian Gardiner, Mark Viner, Mary Dullea - piano
Tammas Slater - organ
Produced in collaboration with Margaret Coldiron and Dave Smith.
About John
John White was born in Berlin in 1936 to an English father and German mother; he arrived in London in 1939. He took piano and theory lessons from
the age of 4 with Hélène Gipps, a second-generation pupil of Brahms. He took a lively interest from early teenage in the musical exception rather than the rule and his interests at that time included Satie, Milhaud and Hindemith, later, early Schönberg, Berg, Webern, Skalkottas and Stockhausen.
Then, at age 19, a step backwards to the enlightened tonality of Messiaen. He began composing at this time, while still a student at the Royal College of Music, under composition professor Bernard Stevens, and he discovered yet more traditionally tonal music with a difference: Medtner and Szymanowski. He was the first student at the Royal College of Music to play Satie, Schöenberg and Messiaen at a chamber concert. He encountered John Tilbury and Cornelius Cardew and spent the 60s deeply involved in “performance art” of the time, but broke away from Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra because of political differences. He has written many single movement piano sonatas (180) under the tonal influences of Satie, Medtner and Szymanowski. John White died on 4 January 2024, but recordings of some of his acoustic symphonies and more electronic music are set to be released in late 2026 and early 2027.
John White 04.05.10
