PETER WHITE... In Concert
The Foundry - SLS Las Vegas
2535 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, 89109
http://foundrylv.com/
Over the years, Peter White has maintained a reputation as one of the
most versatile and prolific acoustic guitarists on the contemporary jazz
landscape. Armed with an unparalleled combination of lyricism and
energy, he combines elements of jazz, pop and classical guitar to create
a sound that is singular and at the same time accessible to a broad
audience.
Born in 1954 in Luton, a small town north of London,
White and his family moved to nearby Letchworth shortly after he was
born. As a child, he learned to play several musical instruments,
including the clarinet, trombone, violin and piano. And of course, like
so many youngsters growing up during the heyday of the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones, he gravitated to the guitar.
He learned his first
chords on an acoustic guitar, then bought his first electric guitar in
his early teens and studied the recordings of the reigning guitar gods
of the day – Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. But his musical
aspirations ultimately veered back in an acoustic direction following an
accident that doomed his beloved electric guitar. The axe was destroyed
in a fire, one that White’s younger brother Danny – an aspiring pianist
– accidentally started.
“The funny thing is that Danny didn’t
actually admit to setting that fire for at least twenty-five years,”
says White. “I had been kind of obsessed with the electric guitar at
that point in my life, so that episode kind of forced me to go back to
playing the acoustic. In retrospect, that’s a good thing.”
Indeed, White’s interests after the accident shifted more toward the
music of acoustic artists like Crosby, Stills and Nash, James Taylor,
and Joni Mitchell. Plugged or unplugged, he had decided by his late
teens that music was his calling, and his first professional gig was at a
holiday resort in England when he was 19 years old.
Barely a
year later, he was invited to join Al Stewart’s band as a keyboardist
for a tour of England, Scotland, and the U.S. in 1975. In addition to
opening for artists like Linda Ronstadt, Billy Joel and Queen, White
worked with Stewart in the studio in the making of Year of the Cat,
which became a huge hit for Stewart in 1976. The tour and the album
marked the beginning of a twenty-year association with Stewart. In that
time, the two musicians co-wrote numerous songs, including Stewart’s
1978 hit, “Time Passages.”
By the beginning of the ‘80s, White
and Stewart had relocated to Los Angeles, formed a band called Shot in
the Dark, and established a music publishing company called Lobster
Music. Around the same time, Danny White – he of the burning guitar
incident several years earlier – formed a group called Matt Bianco,
which included a talented Polish singer named Basia Trzetrzelewska.
Danny White and Basia splintered off to launch the singer’s solo career
with the 1987 debut album, Time and Tide, which featured Peter White on
guitar.
After fifteen years as a backup musician and a session
player, White launched his solo recording career with the 1990 release
of Reveillez-Vous (French for “Wake up,” a title chosen by White in
honor of his French mother). The album included several unused songs
that White had written for Stewart, and it became a favorite among
contemporary jazz radio stations.
He followed with three records
on the Sindrome label – Excusez-Moi (1991), Promenade (1993) and
Reflections (1994) – before signing with Columbia for the 1996 release
of Caravan of Dreams. He maintained an ambitious release schedule
through the ‘90s and beyond, but also found time to appear on recordings
by many of his friends, including Dave Koz, Rick Braun, Richard
Elliot, Jeff Golub, Lee Ritenour, Kirk Whalum, Boney James and many
others.
On the road, he has participated in numerous “Guitars and
Saxes” tours with the aforementioned players, and has established an
annual “Peter White Christmas Tour” – the latter enterprise fueled by
the success of his two highly regarded holiday albums, Songs of the
Season (1997) and A Peter White Christmas (2007).
Good Day,
released in 2009 on Peak Records, a division of Concord Music Group, was
White’s first collection of original songs in several years. “I just
started going through my backlog of material – songs that I’d never
finished, some going as far back as ten or fifteen years – and I
discovered that I had a lot of gems that I really wanted to show to the
world,” he says. “I wanted to record them in my own time and in my own
way, without any outside influence or interference.”
White
released Here We Go in 2012 on Heads Up International, a division of
Concord Music Group. The 11-song set, produced by White and DC (George
Benson, Larry Carlton, Bob James, Patty Austin), featured several
high-profile guest musicians, including saxophonists David Sanborn and
Kirk Whalum, and pianist Philippe Saisse, and included a range of
original material written in the recent and distant past. “I wanted
variety,” says White. “I wanted songs that moved me, in the hopes that
they’ll move the listener as well. I’m on a journey, and I want to bring
with me anyone who’s willing to follow.”
Smile, released on
October 7, 2014, is the final CD in White’s trilogy of albums consisting
entirely of his own material. Co-produced with DC, the recording
features ten tracks – some were written recently, some White wrote along
the way with close friends and some were from the vault. Special guests
include Mindi Abair (vocals), Rick Braun (horns), Euge Groove (soprano
sax) and Philippe Saisse (keyboards, piano and orchestra programming).
White’s daughter, Charlotte, plays violin on one song.
In a
career that spans nearly four decades, over a dozen solo recordings and
countless performances, White insists that it’s the faces in the crowd
and the fans that keep the experience fresh. “I’ll play a live show, and
someone will come to me afterward and say, ‘Oh, I loved this CD,’ or
‘This song helped me through a bad time,’” he explains. “Or I get emails
from people saying, ‘Oh, I love the way you covered one of my favorite
songs on your record back in 1994.’ The idea that someone can write me
an email and tell me about something I did on a record that was released
fifteen years ago – you can’t buy that. That’s priceless. That’s what
keeps me going – the idea that people out there really care about what I
do, the idea that I’ve made a difference for someone.”
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