Gary White has served as music director and conductor of several orchestras in the Philadelphia area, including the award-winning college prep program Philadelphia Sinfonia Association (a youth orchestra of high-level student musicians where he conducted for 26 years until 2025) and Orchestra Concordia, an adult community orchestra he helped to create. He guest conducts extensively for professional, university and high school orchestras and music festivals throughout the Tri-State area. He was also a professional freelance French horn player. Gary trained at the prestigious Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestral Musicians in Hancock, ME, graduated from The New School of Music, and earned a Masters degree from Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music.
In 2016 Gary decided that in addition to conducting, he wanted to return to playing again and began studying with Gwyn Roberts. In addition to studies with Ms Roberts, he has also studied with Elissa Berardi, Alison Melville and Letitia Berlin and participated in masterclasses with such renowned performer/teachers as Saskia Coolen and the Flanders Recorder Quartet. He is an original member of the WindWay Recorder Quartet, guest musician for the Sophia Consort, performs extensively in the Richmond, VA area with RVA Baroque both as a featured soloist and ensemble member. He has participated in many Amherst Early Music workshops and seminars. Gary also plays traverso and renaissance flute.
As a conductor, Gary has had the great pleasure of several collaborations with Philadelphia’s top Baroque Orchestra, Tempesta di Mare, founded by his teacher and colleague, Gwyn Roberts, and her husband, Richard Stone. He has also put the recorder front and center in the modern orchestral world by conducting the US premiere of Graham Fitkin’s Recorder Concerto with Tom Beets of the Flanders Recorder Quartet as soloist, and Jamie Allen’s Concerto for Recorder, Percussion and Strings, featuring Heloise Degrugillier.
Gary lives in Richmond, Virginia and is enthusiastic about working with WRS musicians.