"The Fun House was scarier by far than the Haunted House, not least because I was supposed to enjoy it. I just wanted to find the way out. But the doors marked EXIT led only to futher crazy rooms, endless moving corridors. There was one route through the Fun House, relentless to the very end."

- Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

In addition to being a prolific composer of chamber music, Barbara White creates theatrical performances incorporating words, movement, video, and onstage ceremony.  She is also an idiosyncratic clarinetist, exploring the wonders of the sounding breath through a kinship with the solo Zen repertoire of the Japanese bamboo flute.  Current composing/performing projects include duos with shakuhachi performer Riley Lee and with Cape Breton guitarist Charles MacDonald, with whom she forms the duo Fork & Spoon. 

Honors and awards include a Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, three awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship.  White’s fourth solo CD, a recording of the opera Weakness with a libretto by the composer, was released on Albany Records in 2013.  In 1998, she joined the faculty of the Princeton University Music Department, where she is now Professor.