Walter White

Biography

Walter White grew up in a musical family near Detroit, MI which inspired him to begin his musical career. Walter learned to play the baritone horn and tuba before settling on trumpet by age nine. Trained at Interlochen Center For the Arts, The Juilliard School, the University of Miami, and The Banff Centre, Walter’s former teachers include William Vacchiano, John Lindenau, Vincent Cichowicz, Mel Broiles, Leon Rapier, Carmine Caruso, Jerome Amend, and Kenny Wheeler.

Walter’s expressive trumpet-playing led him to collaborate with many of the top names in music including: Bob James, Dave Holland, the Mingus Big Band, the Woody Herman Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gunther Schuller, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, The Jaco Pastorius Big Band, and Arturo Sandoval. This list also includes David Matthew’s Manhattan Jazz Orchestra with whom Walter recorded seven award-winning records for the Japanese market. During the early 1990’s, Walter toured and recorded with his boyhood hero, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, and is featured on the CD, Live from London, playing “The Fox Hunt,” a sizzling duet with Maynard recorded at the world-famous jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s, in London’s Soho district.

Presently, Walter serves as leader of the Walter White Jazz Quartet, and his 11-piece ‘big- band,’ Walter White & Small Medium @ Large, who recently released the recording, Breaking Good, which received substantial national radio play and reached into the top 20 on the Jazz Week charts. The band opened for Pat Metheny at the 2012 Detroit Jazz Festival and was featured performers at the 2013 International Trumpet Guild Conference, playing their own set and backing up trumpet great, Arturo Sandoval.

Walter’s playing has enhanced the sound tracks of records, movies, and television, including network sitcoms, TAXI and The Cosby Show. As a recording studio owner, Walter produces music for records, television, and film. In 1994, Walter produced the Walter White Long-tone Accompaniment, a play-along CD for music practice, now in its third printing.

Walter has been commissioned to write and to arrange for large jazz ensembles and small groups, choirs, woodwind quartets, and brass ensembles. He has composed numerous original works for big band and his American Songbook arrangements for Symphonic Pops have become an audience favorite.

In addition to his performance and touring schedule, Walter is active as an educator. He teaches privately and holds master classes at music schools across the country and abroad. Walter is a frequent guest soloist with leading university jazz ensembles and has been an artist-in-residence at Rutgers University, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and Tulsa University.