Thirty years of playing, from orchestral repertoire and chamber music to drumset and drum machines.

Lawson White is a percussionist trained in the concert tradition and working well outside it. A former member of Sō Percussion and Alarm Will Sound, he performs regularly with the Nashville Symphony and has played at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Park Avenue Armory, BAM, The Kennedy Center, and the Walker Art Center, and the Guggenheim in NYC, to name a few. He holds an MM from the Yale School of Music and a BM and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music.

Selected Performance

Recordings Sō Percussion · Alarm Will Sound · Steve Reich · David Lang · Nashville Symphony · Lorrie Morgan · Joshua Bell · Matmos · Hell on Wheels (ABC) · Various TV commercials and films

Ensemble and orchestral Sō Percussion · Alarm Will Sound · Nashville Symphony · Alabama Symphony · Rochester Philharmonic

Drumset Chromeo · Shugo Tokumaru · Connie Smith · Balún

Dance Merce Cunningham — Ocean (Lincoln Center Festival, 2005) · Eliot Feld / Ballet Tech — Ugha Bugha, A Stair Dance

Theater Jack Vees — Feynman (Real Time Opera, 2005), percussion and staged role

Composers and collaborators Steve Reich · David Lang · Michael Gordon · Julia Wolfe · John Zorn · Zakir Hussain · Matmos

Teaching

Lawson joined the percussion faculty at Belmont University's School of Music in fall 2026, teaching applied percussion and the classical seminar and performing in the faculty percussion quartet. Previous to that he taught at Yale University, both as a TA in the classroom and a private instructor, and as an Adjunct Instructor of Percussion Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. He has given master classes at Juilliard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, and many other universities and conservatories in the US and abroad.

Outside the university he keeps a small private studio, open to players from a first lesson through conservatory audition preparation — concert percussion, drum set, hand percussion, and electronic percussion and programming. Lessons take place at The Parlor on Music Row, at his home studio, or at the student's home.

Instruments

Pearl Drums · Adams Percussion · Vic Firth sticks and mallets · Alternate Mode controllers · Ableton Live

Elsewhere on This Site

Music for Dance — composing and performing with choreographers

Music for Film — composing and performing original music to picture

Sound Design — site-responsive and theatrical work

Stage and Screen — performer and actor credits

Production — engineering, mixing, and record-making