Guest Recital to Feature UA Alumnus Edward White Jr. at Moody Music Building

Tuscaloosa, Ala. – The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences School of Music will present a guest recital featuring UA alumnus Edward White Jr., bass baritone; Katherine Sherwood White, mezzo soprano; and L. Jeffries Binford Jr., piano, on Jan. 30 at 2 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Moody Music Building.

The program will include selections by Christoph Willibald von Gluck, Marco Antonio Cesti, Francesco Durante, Franz Schubert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georges Bizet, Samuel Barber, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Aaron Copland. The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, phone 205/348-7111 or visit www.music.ua.edu/calendar.

The trio has several associations with UA. In addition to White’s alumni status, his parents were both members of the voice faculty with the UA School of Music. Binford was an interim organ instructor at UA during the 2002-03 academic year, and he continues to have a presence at UA as he accompanies the University Singers, voice students and voice faculty recitals.

White and Katherine Sherwood White are husband and wife. They have sung together in musicals, oratorios, church choirs, weddings and duo voice recitals. The White’s reside in New Orleans.

Edward White is an active performer in opera, oratorio, and musical theater. Some of his roles include: Figaro in “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Don Alfonso in “Cosi fan tutte,” Masetto in “Don Giovanni,” Reverend Olin Blitch in “Susannah,” and Frank Maurrant in “Street Scene.”

As a bass soloist, White has performed works such as Handel’s “Messiah,” Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony,” Mozart’s “Requiem,” and Bach’s “B-minor Mass.” He holds vocal performance degrees from The University of Alabama, from the University of Texas and is working on his doctorate of musical arts degree from the University of Kentucky.

Katherine Sherwood White has performed leading roles with Central City Opera, Kentucky Opera Theatre, and Texas Opera Theatre, including the title role in Handel’s “Rinaldo,” Nerone in “L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” Cherubino in “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and the mother in “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”

As a soloist, she has performed works such as Mozart’s “Requiem” and Vivaldi’s “Gloria” with churches throughout the southeast. She holds a bachelor of music degree from Northwestern State University and a master of music degree from the University of Texas. She is currently working on her doctorate of musical arts degree from the University of Kentucky.

Binford began studying organ at the age of 8 and by the age of 12 was playing for his home church in Brownsville, Texas. He received a bachelor’s degree from Belmont College and a master’s degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.

Binford has served churches as organist/choirmaster in Tennessee, New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, Texas and Alabama. His interest in British choral and organ music took him to London for study at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret’s, Westminster. For several years, he has made annual trips to France to study with Marie-Louise Langlais in Paris. He is featured in two recordings made by the French Organ Music Seminar performing at Sainte-Clotilde Church in Paris and the cathedral in Aix en Provence. He is the organist at First Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state with 6,600 students and 360 faculty. Students from the college have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships, and memberships on the “USA Today” Academic All American Team.