About Dave White

Dave White has many years of experience both playing and recording with local artists including Grapes of Jazz, Gravity Jazz & Gospel, the Tommy Wade Jazz Orchestra, Direct Energy, The Usual Suspects, Jerry Loos & Stormfront, Dave Absalom, Dwight Bailey, and Adria Shahid. He contributed keyboards to Alison Kitchen's project, "Mercy Dancing". Dave has also played keyboards with nationally known artists Darwin Hobbs, Terry Butler, Carman, Brian Doerksen, and Martin Smith (of Delirious?). Dave played for worship teams at Vineyard Church of Columbus for 15 years. He currently contributes keyboards for services at Oasis City Church, Wesley Church of Hope and other local churches. During the '80s Dave played in local progressive rock bands. For the first decade of his musical life, Dave studied classical music with Lehigh Valley, PA teacher, Frank Chesebro.

Grapes of Jazz was founded in 2003 by Dave White. Unlike many jazz groups, the group explored all styles belonging to the jazz family including standards, be-bop, hard-bop, soul-jazz, fusion, and progressive rock. The group played for festivals, clubs, weddings, corporate parties, coffee houses, and church events including the Columbus Jazz & Rib Festival, Vonn Jazz, Lindey's, Stratford Ecological Center's "Enchanted Evening", and Bank One (now JP Morgan Chase). The group tailored its set lists to suit the occasion.

Dave played with Gravity Jazz & Gospel from 2007 to 2023. Gravity was an instrumental jazz and gospel group based in Columbus, Ohio. The group played a mixture of contemporary and classic jazz, soul, R&B, and urban gospel music. The group originally started out as a 15 member urban gospel group called God's People Rendering Inspirational Praise (G.R.I.P.) in 2007. However, the logistics and economics of managing a group of that size were untenable.

The group incorporated styles of music that have roots in the church: jazz, soul, and R&B. With the success of the gospel-jazz brunch format for clubs and churches, Gravity was formed in order to play multiple styles of music in a variety of settings.

Gravity played at many events and organizations including the Columbus Jazz & Rib Fest, the Columbus Arts Festival, the West Virginia Wine & Jazz Festival, Maria's Lounge, The Lincoln Theatre, Las Margaritas, The American Diabetes Association, and The Troubadour.

Dave writes original jazz music for his own label, Black Cat Central Music.

Other Bands

From 2007 to 2023 Dave played with Gravity Jazz and Gospel. You can listen to their music and view band photos.

In 2003 Dave founded and ran his group Grapes of Jazz. You can listen to their music or view band photos. The group was active to 2015.

Dave currently plays keyboards for Direct Energy and for The Usual Suspects.