Rodney Whitaker

Acoustic Bass icon Acoustic Bass

58 age

February 22, 1968 Birthday

Detroit, Michigan, U.S. Birthplace

www.rodneywhitaker.com Website

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About

Rodney Whitaker is a jazz bassist, composer, and educator based in East Lansing, Michigan. He serves as University Distinguished Professor and Director of Jazz Studies at Michigan State University, where he has built one of the nation's leading jazz programs. His performing career began in 1989 with the Terence Blanchard-Donald Harrison Quintet, followed by four years with Roy Hargrove's group and seven years with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra under Wynton Marsalis. He has recorded with Pat Metheny, Kenny Garrett, Joe Lovano, James Carter, and Diana Krall among many others. His albums as leader include Children of the Light, All Too Soon: The Music of Duke Ellington, and the ongoing Gregg Hill series. In 2024, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also directs the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Civic Jazz Orchestra and the East Lansing Summer Solstice Jazz Festival.

Trivia

Whitaker adopted the motto "Each one, teach one" from Detroit pianist Kenny Cox, making mentorship central to his career. His protege Endea Owens became the bassist on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He received an Emmy nomination in 2011 for scoring the PBS documentary Malawi and Malaria. In the late 1990s, he led the house band at Detroit's Blue Bird Inn, the same venue where his idol Paul Chambers had played decades earlier.

Early Life

Rodney Whitaker was born on February 22, 1968, in Detroit, Michigan. He began playing violin at age eight and switched to double bass five years later after hearing Paul Chambers on John Coltrane's album Soultrane. He studied with trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, a former sideman with Max Roach and Charles Mingus, and with Robert Gladstone, principal bassist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, gaining foundations in both jazz and classical traditions. As a teenager he joined Donald Washington's ensemble Bird/Trane/Sco/Now! and quickly built a reputation on the Detroit jazz scene. He attended Wayne State University while gigging professionally around the city. In 1989, saxophonist Donald Harrison heard Whitaker at a jam session in Detroit and invited him to join the Terence Blanchard-Donald Harrison Quintet, launching his national career at age twenty-one.