White, Keith

• Keith Maher White

Keith White, a jazz pianist and mathematics teacher, was born on June 19, 1929 in Toronto and now lives in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec. He spent most of his childhood in Cleveland and came to Montreal at 15 to live with his grandparents. After graduating at the Montreal High School in 1949, he went to Clarkson College of Technology in Postdam, N.Y. He returned to Montreal in 1951 and attended Sir George Williams College (B. Sc. 1953, B. A. 1954).

From 1953, he worked as an engineer in Montreal while studying in the evenings. Between 1955 and 1957 he worked as engineer in Baltimore, Md., and Melbourne, Fl. From 1957 to 1959 he studied for a master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Miami. He returned to live in Montreal in the summer of 1959 where he began teaching mathematics at Sir George Williams University. He stayed on for two years and then taught in High Schools and CEGEPs. He retired from teaching in 1974.

Keith White began to play piano at age 6. In the 1950s, while studying and working for engineering firms, he worked in the evenings as a part-time musician, for example, in a relief band at Chez Paree in Montreal, in 1952-1953, as solo pianist for 3 months at the Baltimore hotel in 1955 and in 1960 as leader of the rhythm sections for the Montreal Jazz Society at Little Vienna (on Stanley Street). In 1952 he co-founded the Jazz Workshop with Paul Bley. Because of his teaching commitments Keith White retired from the jazz scene in the fall of 1960. From then on, he only worked occasionally as a musician. In the 1970s he organized a series of concerts at the Musée des Beaux-Arts under the name Jazz Workshop. His son André became a professional jazz drummer and pianist. Around 1980, the father and the son played together briefly at the C-Note.

White passed away on April 24, 2020.

Created 2015-06-05
Revised 2017-06-06

https://montrealgazette.remembering.ca/obituary/keith-white-1082539593