On the surface, Bill Whitley looks and lives the part of your average Oregonian. He is soft-spoken and unassuming, with a button-up shirt and jeans, black-rimmed glasses, slightly graying hair, and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. His office is plain and simple, neatly organized, painted with muted pastels that don’t offer much in the way of decoration or distraction. He apologized as he fumbled with the camera at the start of our video call, stating that he had never really gotten used to the remote setup that had become necessary with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is not the air you may expect from an internationally-renowned composer, whose work has been featured everywhere from the local radio waves to the orchestra halls of Europe.
Whitley comes from a musical background, growing up in the Pacific Northwest as the child of two musicians. A long educational journey took him from local universities all the way to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He has recently returned to his geographical roots and is currently a part-time instructor at Linn-Benton Community College, teaching courses like musical composition, aural skills, and music theory.
However, a spark lit up his eyes as we began to discuss his work outside of the classroom. Evidenced by the excitement in his voice, this is clearly his passion. “I was surprised that they were all questions about my composing career, which is kind of nice,” he remarked about the outline I had prepared. “Usually people want to know the teaching part of it!”
The Kaleidoscope
Whitley began composing his own works during his time in college. His influences are varied; from groups like Pink Floyd and YES to individual musicians like Billy Joel and Thelonius Monk, he has incorporated the entire spectrum of songwriting into his works. However, one group in particular would end up molding his approach into what it is today.
“The world collided when I first heard Dream Theater,” he recalls, “because that seemed to be everything that I had been working on all through my graduate work. And it’s like, here’s a metal man that’s actually doing it and they’ve got all the same influences that I do.”
As he learned more about different musical cultures around the world, he continually found himself drawn to these more conceptual and technical styles. In particular, music from Southeast Asia (including Bali, India, and Vietnam) would mold his work going forward. Whitley likens his compositions to an expanding star or a flowing river, with different melodies branching out like flares and tributaries from a central body.
“I’m really about, like, number symbology and structure,” he explains. “And I like to build things from the center outward. That’s an idea I totally stole from Indian music: You have rhythmic structures that build in the middle and grow outward. We hear it from left to right, but the music is working toward the center.”
Nowhere is this more evident than “Kaleidoscope,” a piece he began writing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I started writing that piece when everything was really, really crappy,” he reflects. “‘Undone’ – that was the working title of it because it just felt like everything was falling apart here. And then as I got deeper into the piece, it started to sound to me like a kaleidoscope. It sounded like little glittery explosions, some diamonds or something … and there’s really nothing going on but at the same time, events keep stacking up on top of one another.”
This process of branching and returning is not without obstacles. While the final version of “Kaleidoscope” ends up being around 13 minutes long, he says it “wanted” to be almost double that length. One way he corrals compositions that run amok is through his aforementioned affinity for numbers. For example, the piece “Little White Salmon” off his album “I Dream Awake” is broken up into seven numbered tracks. It incorporates ambient sounds, various instrumentals, and spoken poetry to weave a tale across the album; while being many individual tracks, it tells one cohesive story.
The Kingpins
When further exploring Whitley’s catalog, you may notice that many of the same names are listed as co-composers or contributors. Whitley notes that most of these collaborations lead back to one man: Italian musician Francesco Zago.
“There’s the kingpin,” he jokes. “Francesco worked with one of my ‘non-traditional’ students when I was teaching at [Western Oregon University] … She looked at my music and said, ‘You should reach out to Francesco. I think you’d like it.’ That was 2010 and we ended up just becoming really good friends; I would perform his music over here, he performed my music over there.”
Having grown tired of the academia sphere and how he was “supposed” to teach music, Whitley arranged a trip to Italy to meet Zago in person. Through him, Whitley would meet musicians such as pianist Elena Talarico (now Zago’s wife), composer Federico De Zottis, and percussionist Stefano Grasso. Based in Milan, they would work together to weave aural art that would go on to be featured in concert halls around Italy and parts of Eastern Europe. He still keeps in touch with most of them, and hopes to visit Zago and Talarico again in the near future.
That said, not all of his colleagues are international. A composer specializing in electronic and experimental music, Doug Bielmeier, learned of Whitley’s work through Instagram and invited him to his podcast “The Process.” This podcast covers the creative process of different artists, and Bielmeier has been able to host a wide variety of musicians since its start in 2016. While he is not particularly fond of what social media has become, Whitley knows that he would have not met Bielmeier without it. Musicians stay relevant by constantly putting themselves out there, and regularly posting on social media is one of the best ways to do that.
In addition, he has nothing but glowing praise for his colleagues at LBCC’s music program. “This is something that LBCC people need to know: I was done with teaching,” he reveals. “In 2017, I got back into teaching at an invitation [from the college]: ‘Would you consider covering this class?’” Despite his earlier academic burnout, he doesn’t regret coming back and says that “this has been the single most positive environment I’ve ever worked in as a teacher.”
The Revelation
In preparation for his trip to Italy, Whitley had an epiphany about music theory. “I was taking an Italian class for obvious reasons, and it dawned on me in this Italian grammar class that is exactly what I teach! The way I thought of it, music theory is to music what grammar is to language, and that’s why it’s important. You’re taking this stuff that people already hear, and then you have all these fancy names for it, then there’s rules about how the things work and why the rules are there.”
“The hard part,” he continues, “is that people sometimes – really established and good musicians – just never get it because they can’t get past what feels like just a bunch of rules. So I’ve sort of learned to teach it from the aural perspective first and that was a big breakthrough.” He has incorporated this into both his songwriting and teaching processes: Write using the emotions and feelings you want to convey first, then use more established music theory to refine it further.
Yet, music is only one part of the larger composition that is Whitley’s life. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Oregon, spending most of his free time with them. He enjoys snowboarding and ice hockey as hobbies to stay physically active, noting that songwriting can be a very insular activity. He encourages this variety and balance to all of his students as well.
“It’s not about 1 + 1 = 2 with the degree. This is an important piece of your life that you need to honor and nurture. How you make your money does not have to be music, and you know it. When you get a degree in the arts like this, it’s just because you want to get better at that art. Your life is gonna be all these other things.”
You can listen to Whitley’s music here.
