Biography

Emily White is a freelance musician specialising in historical performance. She brought out her first solo disc A Cry Was Heard with Deux-Elle record label in 2022, and her second: Made Human is released in 2024. She launched her YouTube Channel in 2020, and in 2024 was invited to present an episode of Inside Music on BBC Radio 3, sharing her insights into music she loves with listeners. She is a member of The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble who’s 16 discs include Classic FM disc of the month, BBC Choice, several Gramophone Awards and Diapason d’Or winners. She also plays principal regularly for Il Giardino Armonico in Italy, playing on the Diapason D'or Disc of the Year La Morte della Ragione. She works with Les Talens Lyriques in France, B’Rock in Belgium and the 'crack British ensemble’ (The Observer) In Echo. She loves the freedom that can be found in early music performance and contemporary music. Her trio Pandora's Box with John Kenny and Miguel Sevilliano Tantos has toured their improvisatory take on contemporary and early music to Portugal, Spain, Ireland, UK and USA. 

Emily formed Sackbut Frenzy in 2011 to share her love of early music with her local community in Gloucestershire, and now London as well. The ensemble continues to comprise her current and former students, friends, and was awarded an Continuo Foundation Support for performances including premieres of commissions for new music for sackbut.

John Kenny wrote his ground-breaking Sonata 'Secret House' featuring multi phonics in the female vocal range for Emily, she released a disc of it with Carnyx and Co in 2010 and a video in 2020 on her YouTube channel. Emily is very interested in new music for early instruments and Alex Paxton, (winner of the Paul Hindemith Prize and Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation prize for composition) wrote Apocalypse Flower for unaccompanied sackbut for Emily and she will premier it at The British Trombone Festival in 2024 .

She has also had works written for her by Rachel Stott, Peter McCarthy, Peter Cowdrey, Ercole Nisini and David Ward and has written several pieces herself. Simon Proctor recently completed a sackbut concerto he wrote for her and it will be premiered with The Orchestra of St John's in 2025.

Emily is professor of sackbut and trombone at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, teaches trombone and sackbut at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and teaches trombone at Wells Cathedral School. She was guest sackbut teacher at Schola Cantorum Basillensis in 2023, was awarded an ARAM, The British Trombone Society Sheila Tracey Award for female trombonist who have had an impact, and is an affiliated artist with Conn-Selmer.

Education:

Royal Academy of Music BMus

Guildhall School of Music and Drama MMus

Trinity Laban PG Dip (baroque violin)

Brass teaching qualification LRAM

ARAM awarded in 2016 for services to early music