Dr. Michael White is a renowned clarinetist, bandleader, composer, historian, and educator, widely recognized as a leading authority on traditional New Orleans jazz. A senior professor of African American music at Xavier University, he has toured internationally and collaborated with artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal, Paul Simon, and Marianne Faithfull. In 2015, he produced and performed on New Orleans Brass Bands: Through the Streets of the City for the Smithsonian Institution and has served as a guest director for Jazz at Lincoln Center. Among his many honors, Dr. White was named a Chevalier of Arts & Letters by the French government (1995), received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship (2008), and was Louisiana’s Humanist of the Year (2010). He has also been recognized multiple times as Clarinetist of the Year by Offbeat Magazine.

Tonight, Dr. White pays tribute to the legendary Buddy Bolden. Charles Joseph “Buddy” Bolden (September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931) was an American cornetist who was regarded by contemporaries and later jazz scholars as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music, or “jass”, which later came to be known as jazz.