AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2025 | 17 e guitarist, best known for his graceful acoustic guitar stylings and expert composing skills, started his career in 1974 as a sideman for folk-rock veteran Al Stewart and released his rst solo album in 1990. To loosely paraphrase the Grateful Dead, it’s been a long, wondrous trip for White. “I guess this means I’m a (expletive) survivor,” the musician, who has been adopted by smooth jazz audiences worldwide and found success beyond his imagination, said with a laugh. Speaking from his home a er returning from two weeks on the Dave Koz and Friends at Sea full-ship charters to northern Europe, he added: “I’m extremely lucky that I was able to forge my own path, but it’s been a slow process. I’m thrilled to keep making music, and I think I’m making the best music of my life and playing the best shows. “I’m playing a lot of them. I just got o two weeks on Dave’s cruise, which was great, and I got to play a show with Boney James, which is always a big thrill because he’s such a great artist. “So, I get to play the music I choose with the musicians I’ve chosen. I’m the luckiest guy alive.” e genial, witty White is a wonderful storyteller in conversation, and he has a deep knowledge of music composition, pop music history and contemporary artists. He dropped numerous references to e Beatles, who had a profound in uence on his melodic style. To make abstract musical concepts concrete, he sang melodies and ri s while explaining how songs were composed. Talking to him is a small tutorial in music as art. In February, he put out the transportive album Light of Day, which is one of his nest e orts. It’s a de mix of ambitious songs and more popleaning jazz. As always with White, since he emerged on the instrumental music scene as a solo artist with Réveillez-Vous in 1990, it’s a song-based album with ambitious compositions such as the epic, eight-minute “Odyssey” and the gently evocative ballads “Enchanted” and “I Love You Still.” White recruited his friends Rick Braun, Vincent Ingala and saxophonist Ernie Watts to help him. His playing is spirited and as dexterous as always, and the album emerges as a coherent song cycle about moving forward to nd solace. “I wanted the album to have musical continuity from track one to track 10, and I worked it out a long time ago,” White revealed. “It didn’t come together at the end of the process, as usual. I knew how the songs t together, and I wanted to tell a story by taking the listener on a journey. A lot of modern music is about repetition— maybe because of computers. Sometimes, they are made by computers. I wanted to avoid that. “I think writing a good song is the balance between something unexpected and something repetitive. ere’s always going to be repetition with a chorus, but I think you can go too far in that direction. I wanted a certain element of surprise on this album, so the listener will think, ‘OK, I didn’t expect that’ as they go on the musical journey.” He thought for a moment and continued with one of his numerous digressions into pop history. “Sometimes in making this, I thought about my favorite album from the past that mixed repetition and surprise—Sgt. Pepper’s (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) from The Beatles. There were times in creating when I thought, ‘What would The Beatles do here?’ Not that I’m comparing myself to The Beatles, but I made the record for the people who listen to albums from the beginning to the end and would appreciate the surprises and journey.” The opening track, “Catalonia,” takes listeners to Spain with its sweeping, romantic soundscapes that Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem would appreciate. “ e rst time I was ever in Barcelona was when I was playing with Al Stewart back in 1985 or so, and I had a free day where I walked around the city, going to the zoo and other destinations. at was the inspiration for the song. You hear the sights and sounds of Barcelona, which is in Catalonia, in the song. I’ve been to Barcelona many times since. at rst time stuck with me.” this, I favorite album continued on page 18 “So, I get to play the music I choose with the musicians I’ve chosen. I’m the luckiest guy alive.” Photo: Lori Stoll
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