USA Projects

Frances White composes instrumental vocal, and electronic music.  She studied composition at the University of Maryland, Brooklyn College, and Princeton University.    She has received awards, honors, grants, commissions, and fellowships from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Aaron Copland Fund, Prix Ars Electronica, the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, 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 MacDowell Colony, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. 
Recent commissions include one from the Third Practice Festival at the University of Richmond to write The ocean inside  for the acclaimed ensemble eighth blackbird; from the Fromm Foundation to write  A flower on the farther side for the viol consort Parthenia; and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to write the first act of a chamber opera,  Maurice Remembered,  for pianist/baritone Thomas Otten.  She is currently working on  Tracing, a piece commissioned by the MAP Fund for trombonist Monique Buzzarté.

Ms. White's music can be heard on CD on the Wergo, Centaur, Nonsequitur, Harmonia Mundi, and Bridge Records labels.  A CD devoted to her electroacoustic chamber works,  Centre Bridge,  was released in August of 2007 on the Mode Records label.   Ms. White's music was featured as part of the soundtrack of three of Gus Van Sant's award-winning films:   Elephant,   Paranoid Park,  and  Milk.

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 near her home in central New Jersey.