Lawson White
Lawson White is an interdisciplinary artist and composer working across ambient, electronic, and chamber music — a multi-instrumentalist and singer who moves between composition and live improvisation, and increasingly into work made with dancers, filmmakers, and visual artists.
Lawson White is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose work spans ambient, electronic, and chamber music. Working with voice, pedal steel, analog synthesizers, percussion, and live electronics, he makes music for bodies, rooms, and records — moving fluidly between written composition and real-time improvisation, and increasingly beyond music alone, into work created with dancers, choreographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.
His current focus is live, improvised performance: responding in the moment to a dancer, a film, or a room, and shaping sound as it unfolds. He is developing a new interdisciplinary work in response to International Surrealism from Tate: Fifty Years of Dreams at the Frist Art Museum, May 22–August 30, 2026.
This way of working grows out of an unusually wide musical life. Lawson has collaborated with choreographers including Merce Cunningham, Shen Wei, and Elliot Feld, and with artists across contemporary classical and experimental music — among them David Lang, John Zorn, Bryce Dessner, Zeena Parkins, Matmos, Kronos Quartet, So Percussion, yMusic, and the Metropolitan Opera.
As a producer and engineer — and a singer and player on much of what he makes — he has worked on multiple GRAMMY-nominated and -winning recordings, and with artists including Jamie xx, Twenty One Pilots, Turnstile, Brittany Howard, Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Ben Folds, Shara Nova/My Brightest Diamond, Shakira, and Béla Fleck. He works from The Parlor on Music Row in Nashville.
A former member of So Percussion and Alarm Will Sound, he performs regularly with the Nashville Symphony.
He holds an MM from the Yale School of Music and a BM and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music.
Lawson uses Pearl Drums / Adams Percussion, Vic Firth Sticks, Ableton Live, Eventide effects, and plugins by iZotope, KIT, oeksound, Safari Pedals, PSPaudioware and Baby Audio.
Lawson’s Discography & Credits on AllMusic.comLabel / Publishing Company
Sound Practitioner - Certified in the Sara Auster Sound Method