DAVID O. WHITE IS A VOCALIST, COMPOSER, AND ARRANGER. Music has always been a focal point in his family upbringing, singing with his parents or his brothers in churches they attended, but he enjoyed the historical and popular folk songs of America that he learned to sing in the public schools, and the variety of music that could be found from the various radio stations, television shows, and movies. At age 10, he starting violin lessons in the public school and eventually took private lessons and played with the Oklahoma City Junior Symphony. When helping his father deliver the newspapers, on his motor route, they had the car radio on and listened to American jazz and standards, in the “Wee Small Hours” of the morning, sung by artists like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peggy Lee, and on Saturday afternoon they listened to The Texaco Metropolitan Opera Broadcast “live” from New York City. He began expanding his music appreciation by purchasing music of various genres from the Columbia Record Club, enjoying collecting Big Band music, from Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and the Andrews Sisters, as well as classical recordings of music of many different composers, and his favorite orchestra was the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan. In high school, he found out the school’s “elite” choir, the Northwest Classen Cry-Slurs, were going to a choral competition in Graz, Austria. Even though he’d never had sing lessons, but was a natural singer, he dreamed of going to Austria and he knew this was his chance to do it. He set up an audition and was accepted, and then began experiencing the discipline and concentration that vocal performance demanded. It was well worth, as the choir, the only choral group west of the Mississippi River invited to attend, won the competition. This experience opened up David’s realization of his singing potential and he ended up with a split scholarship for Voice and Violin.
David O. White, in 1988.
In college, he loved playing in the school’s orchestra, as much as singing in the choir and performing in lead roles in the school’s opera’s and concerts. He began getting singing/dancing work in the Summers, and over the past decades, he has performed, both as a soloist/lead and as part of the ensemble, in professional song and dance venues, in operas, in classical concerts, in music theater, in a Christian rock band, with the Concert Chorale of New York (at Lincoln Center), and with the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York.
