Alan Heathcote White

Whanganui-born composer Alan Heathcote White was educated at Wellington College where he began composing. He claimed descent from Carl Maria von Weber. He became a civil servant after leaving school. He graduated with a BA in 1945, which included music studies. Before then, he made several trips overseas, including further music studies in London at Trinity College, London. As a pacifist he enlisted in the Army Medical Corps during the Second World War where he met his future wife, Kathleen Newton who was a nurse. After the war he was appointed conductor of the Wellington Symphony Orchestra and was one of the early principals of Wellington Polytechnic. The couple moved to Upper Hutt in 1957 and, in 1967, founded the Animal Rescue Society.

Alan was a prolific composer who wrote piano pieces, songs, four oratorios, seven symphonies, a piano concerto and several violin sonatas. Like Claude Haydon, he had pieces regularly performed on the radio, and his pieces were taken up by both New Zealand and international performers including English baritone Peter Dawson, Inia Te Wiata, and American singer Marian Anderson.