LJ White's music serves ideals of direct, focused and socially relevant expression, assimilating an unrestricted array of influences through strange and evocative sonorities and rhythms, concise gestures, and apposite forms.  He is strongly interested in the physical voice (spoken, sung, emulated, and as metaphor,) popular culture, issues of gender identity and queerness, and sociopolitical conditions.  LJ has worked with many of the leading performers in contemporary classical music, including Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble SIGNAL, Ensemble Dal Niente, the JACK Quartet, the Spektral Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Third Angle Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, Lucy Dhegrae, Transient Canvas, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, the Talea Ensemble, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars.  White’s recent projects include collaborations with the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra under Steven Schick, The Crossing, the Breckenridge Music Festival, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Music NOW series, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony’s SFSymphony+ media channel, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s “Live at the Pulitzer” series.

Described as “radiant” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, LJ’s recent choral work a carol called love, with text by Alex Dimitrov, was commissioned by The Crossing in 2021 and released on their album Carols After A Plague in December 2022. His string quartet Zin zin zin zin was included on the Spektral Quartet’s album CHAMBERS, released by Parlour Tapes+ in 2013, and has been hailed by the New York Times as “rich in implications," by New Music Box as "a tour-de-force of quartet writing," and by the Washington Post as “a terrific satire on the inflections that give language meaning.”  His work on the evening-length Everything Means Nothing to Me, created in collaboration with composers Christopher Cerrone, Jacob Cooper, Ted Hearne, Robert Honstein, and Scott Wollschleger and based on songs by the singer-songwriter Elliot Smith, was released by Third Angle Ensemble on a Jackpot Recordings album in September, 2020.  His chamber work We Don’t Eat Dead Things, commissioned by Ensemble Dal Niente and inspired by music of the Iowa indie artist Christopher the Conquered, is included on the ensemble’s new album object/animal, released March 2022. LJ is also represented on NewMusicShelf’s Trans & Nonbinary Voices Vol. 1 anthology, with the art song “Labor Day.” LJ’s 30-minute song cycle for four voices with live electronic processing, The Best Place for This, was commissioned by the Quince Ensemble with support from a Chamber Music America grant in 2016.  He is currently developing and recording a version of the piece for his own voice, combining low and falsetto registers with older recordings from before his gender transition, with support from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, a Puffin Foundation grant, and a MacDowell fellowship. He also has created several choral works for high school and college voices, including I/we, commissioned for the Volti High School Choral Institute, You Are, commissioned jointly by Longmeadow High School (of Longmeadow, MA) and Cornell University, and Great Marsh Songs, commissioned for the combined choral groups of Rockport Middle and High School (of Rockport, MA) and Endicott College.

LJ has won the Craig and Janet Swan Prize, the Margaret Blackburn Composition Competition, an Emil and Ruth Beyer Award from the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Dolce Suono Ensemble Young Composer Competition, the North American Saxophone Alliance Composition Competition, and the American Prize.  He has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Banff Arts Centre, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Manship Artist Residency, and his work has been featured at venues and festivals including the Bang on a Can Summer Festival and annual NYC marathon concert, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, CULTIVATE at Copland House, the Ecstatic Music Festival, the Resonant Bodies Festival, REDCAT, the Ear Taxi Festival, Omaha Under the Radar, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College.  

LJ completed his DMA in composition at Northwestern University in 2017 and has held full-time teaching positions at Washington University in St. Louis and New College of Florida.