What
My new album, released today on Navona records. This is the first commercial released album dedicated to my music.

Who
Yes, me, but really, this album is the brainchild and accomplishment of Joseph Vaz. Joey was my student and he’s become my friend and collaborator. Looking back on this project from the beginning, it was all his idea and he bamboozled me into doing it.

His first step was to ask me to write him a piano sonata that he could play on his master’s recital at CCM. I was very happy to oblige him on this, and it was my first of many sanity-saving lockdown-era composition projects. Because of Covid and other exigencies, he wasn’t able to play it on his master’s recital, but he did play it on his doctoral recital* at the CUNY Grad Center, where he’s currently finishing up his DMA in piano performance. He’s also performed it in Maine and in Seattle.

After the success of that piece, Joey asked me to write a set of 11 Bagatelles, an oddly specific request, but he thought it would be a good idea to do some miniatures after a big honking sonata. His logic made sense to me, and when a virtuoso tells you to write more music for them, you do it.

At this point, I felt I had basically written everything I could possibly write for the solo piano. Frankly, I never thought of myself as someone who would or could write well for the piano. It’s an instrument with which I have a fraught relationship, and I’ve always been a little embarrassed by my own lack of prowess at the keyboard.

And yet, it was at this point that Joseph proposed that I write just enough more music so that there would be enough for an album. I will freely admit, he really had to bring me around to his way of thinking about this, both in terms of writing more piano music and in terms of producing a commercially released album of all this stuff.

He wore me down, and I wrote the final solo work for the album**, which ended up being the title track, a suite titled Galanteries. What is a galanterie? Allow me to quote the album’s liner notes: “The term “galanterie” was used by 18th-century composers to describe the optional movements of a Baroque dance suite. A suite required four standard movements — the allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue — but between the sarabande and the gigue a composer could insert a rogue dance: a bourrée, gavotte, minuet, or passacaglia, just to name a few of the options.”

* I continue to be of the opinion that, since my music has now been performed in two recitals for doctoral performance degrees, I should be awarded an honorary doctorate in composition.

** There’s actually one more piece on the album, an arrangement of one of my own hymns, which I made into a pianistic fantasia. It’s really a piano piece with optional voice, which Joey adapted very slightly to account for the few places where the voice has a bit more prominence.

Where
We recorded the album at Oktaven Studios in Mount Vernon, NY, which is the most magical spot imaginable, and a studio that I can recommend most highly to other recording artists (not that they need my endorsement — they seem to be booked 12 hours a day every day.)

The big story of the recording session is that my piano sonata (or maybe Joey’s thumb) is cursed. Every time he’s played it, he’s broken a piano string. Well, we (I) stupidly jinxed ourselves by telling this to the owner of the studio, and he assured us that they had recently restrung their piano (an astonishingly beautiful Hamburg Steinway) with a new extra-tensile string that was all but unbreakable.

Reader, do I have to tell you what happened next? I still have the string.

Shout-out to Oktaven’s amazing emergency piano tech!

How
I mean look, if you want to get an album made, all you really need is money. I don’t have much, but in comparison to many of the delusional, self-aggrandizing recordings I’ve sunk my money into, this one was pretty cheap, and I’m sure it’s the best product I’ve ever made.

To me, the real question here is: how did Joey do it? How did he learn all those notes and dash them off in take after take over so many hours of recording, so consistently? If I didn’t know his parents personally, I’d swear he was a demigod. He’s just a talented, driven, diligent young man, and I can but marvel at his abilities and accomplishments. The fact that he’s chosen to champion my music is an honor beyond belief. I think it’s supposed to go the other way, like with the older musician helping out the younger one, but hey, I’ll take it!

Why
Because we love you. 😘

This past summer (July 2024 to be precise), I found myself on a personal/professional roller coaster the likes of which I never would have imagined when I discovered that several of my compositions had been plagiarized by a teenage scam artist halfway across the world. Not only plagiarized, but passed off as his own compositions, to the point where he had them performed *in concert* by prominent, talented professional musicians in his home country.

This kid plagiarized my music by copying it off of my scrolling-score YouTube videos, admittedly an arduous task that could prove he has the necessary work ethic to write his own music. But here’s the kicker: in spite of the fact that he could have just copied my music without me ever knowing of his existence, the whole time that he was plagiarizing me, he was also writing me lengthy emails, kicked off by an anonymous, out-of-the-blue fan letter:

The story has several more unlikely (and frankly, insane) twists and turns. I’ve recounted it in full detail to several friends and colleagues in private, but now it’s very much a matter of public record, as it’s been voluminously chronicled by Hugh Morris in VAN Magazine.

Because my plagiarist was/is a minor, the editorial team at VAN decided to redact his name and any identifying details, and I’m honoring that same policy here on my website. If you’re a composer who read my story on VAN and you’ve gotten an email similar to the one above, please do send me a (non-anonymous) message, because I’m not the only one who got plagiarized. (For more on that, you’ll have to read the article.)

Also unmentioned in the article — and rather unfortunately, in my view — were the specific works of mine that got caught up in this whole affair, and for the benefit of readers who have navigated their way to willcwhite.com in the hopes of finding out more, I’m happy to assemble them below:

My piano sonata, a huge, dissonant, virtuosic work, is the piece that I first discovered had been performed under false pretenses. I don’t think I can convey my level of shock when I watched the video of this work being performed in No one’s home country. As is mentioned in the article, the most galling thing was when No one bounded on stage, handed the pianist a floral bouquet, and took several bows. (That’s not even counting his speech!) It was the first time I had ever even seen what he looked like.

This next one was actually kind of funny. No one changed the title from “The Seafarers” to “The Mariners,” quite unaware, I’m sure, of the additional layer of irony: the Mariners is the name of Seattle’s professional baseball team.

As far as I know, there was no public performance of the Bagatelles, but after No one had been exposed, he admitted to having plagiarized them, and I can only presume he was trying to pawn them off as his own and arrange a performance.

Lest anyone feel sympathy for me, let me assure you: I’m not the victim here. For me, this has wound up as a wild, unforgettable story. The victims are No one’s friends and family, not to mention the musicians he duped into playing my music under false pretenses.

Anyway, that’s the story of my insane summer!

Harmonia’s 2024-2025 season is here, and this is what’s on tap:

Salvation

BACEWICZ  Overture for Orchestra
BARBER  Prayers of Kierkegaard
BARTOK  Concerto for Orchestra

This program hangs together awfully well, I think: the Bacewicz and the Bartók were written in the same year (1943). Bacewicz was stuck in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, while Bartók had escaped to safety in the U.S. But of course, he was never really comfortable there (here) and was ill basically the whole time. Meanwhile, Barber, a natural-born American citizen, was commissioned by the Boston Symphony in 1943 to write his piece (identical details to Bartók) but it took him 10 years to fulfill the commission. Prayers of Kierkegaard almost never gets performed.

Majesty

HANDEL  Zadok the Priest
HANDEL  Dixit Dominus
BEETHOVEN  Symphony No. 7

This is an all-banger concert. Handel was Beethoven’s favorite composer and it’s easy to hear why.

Messiah

HANDEL Messiah

I say this every year and I mean what I say: it never gets old. When it all goes well, it’s like riding one of those enormous waves off the coast of Portugal, or so one presumes

Innocence

WEBER Overture to Oberon
MAHLER Selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5

There’s a real train of musical thought and influence here. Mahler was so thoroughly into Weber that he basically recomposed Weber’s opera Die Drei Pintos and I think he was sleeping with Weber’s granddaughter or something? One of you musical history buffs will have to fill me in on that. As we all know, Mahler was the major influence, symphonically speaking on Shostakovich. The Weber and Mahler pieces are both about an age of innocence (i.e. childhood.) The Shostakovich is about professing one’s innocence to parties making accusations of guilt.

Invention

BACH Invention a 3 (arr. Swingle Singers)
LAURIDSEN  “Quando son più lontan” from Madrigali
WHITACRE  Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine
GARRETT  The Lesson
DETT  O Holy Lord
BURTON  A Prayer
BRISTOW  At harbor, waiting for wind [world premiere]
KEYT  Nizina [world premiere]
SAMS  “Stone” from The Earthmakers
BACH “Confiteor” from Mass in B minor

I may be on the cusp of understanding how to program a choir concert. It’s been a hard road, but I think I’m getting there. Bach bookends can’t be a bad idea. Then there’s three sets: Lauridsen-Whitacre, in which I found pieces by the kings of contemporary choral music that I actually like; Garrett-Dett-Burton, a little tribute to my friend Marques who is very much a Friend of Harmonia and has introduced me to great music; Bristow-Keyt-Sams, three extremely worthy Seattle composers.

Mass in B Minor

BACH Mass in B minor

Do I really need to say anything?

Spring Rites

BELLINI Overture to Norma
R. SCHUMANN Cello Concerto
MENDELSSOHN Die Erste Walpurgisnacht

I have a growing soft spot for Early Romanticism. When’s the last time you heard this — or any — Bellini overture in concert? I chose this overture because of its thematic resonance: Norma is about druids, and so is Die Erste Walpurgisnacht. Speaking of which, that’s got to be the most unjustly neglected piece in Mendelssohn’s output. It’s spooky, silly, campy fun from start to finish. And the Schumann cello concerto? Come on!