Sallie Vines White teaches full-time at Hoover High School in Hoover, Alabama. Mrs. White has been teaching in the Hoover City School System since 1990. She teaches the award-winning Hoover High School First Edition Jazz Band, Hoover Jam Jazz Band, Symphonic Band, and AP Music Theory. She is also an associate director with the marching band.
The groups she conducts have consistently received Superior ratings at contests including District, State, and Jazz Contests. The Hoover First Edition Jazz Ensemble performed at The Midwest Clinic in Chicago December 2018 and also in December 2012. They were a featured performer in 2014 at the Jazz Education Network Conference in Dallas, TX. In 2017, First Edition was selected to open for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s concert in Birmingham, Alabama.
First Edition has also received national recognition through its selection five times as a finalist in the Savannah Music Festival Swing Central Contest. Prior to that they were selected into the North Texas Jazz Festival and have received all Superior ratings the numerous times they have attended the Loyola Jazz Festival in New Orleans. Many of her students through the years have been selected into the Alabama All State Jazz bands. This past year 16 members of her jazz bands were selected to the Alabama All State Jazz Bands. There have been numerous guests clinic and/or perform with her groups through the years including Jeff Coffin, Wycliffe Gordon, Marcus Printup, Tom Walsh, Andy Martin, John Fedchock, Chuck Redd, Jim Pugh and many others.
Sallie Vines White graduated magna cum laude from Anderson University in Anderson, Indiana in 1982, with a B.A. in Music, Music Education and Psychology. In 1985, she received her M.M.E. in Music Education from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN where she graduated “with distinction”. She studied Jazz at IU with David Baker and Dominic Spera. In addition to teaching, Sallie is an active performer on all the woodwind instruments. She has played engagements as a side musician with Stevie Wonder, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Andy Williams, Joan Rivers, Ray Charles, Linda Eder, the Bill Gaither Trio and many others. She has performed as a musician in over 135 theatre productions in the state of Alabama. Sallie has played numerous engagements with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra on saxophone. She plays lead alto in the Superjazz Big Band, and tenor saxophone in the Cahaba Saxophone Quartet. She toured for several years in various groups including Bridge, the Bill Gaither Trio, and college groups performing in 47 states and 17 countries.
In addition to performing and her full-time teaching position, Mrs. White was formerly the saxophone instructor at Samford University for many years and has taught part-time in the past at a number of the universities around Birmingham including Birmingham Southern, UAB, Samford, and Montevallo. Mrs. White is married to Noah and has three children and five grandchildren.