David L. Hite (September 25, 1923 – January 18, 2004) was an American clarinetist, teacher, and designer of clarinet mouthpieces.

Biography

Born in New Straitsville,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, David Hite studied clarinet with Fred Weaver,

Daniel Bonade Daniel Bonade (April 4, 1896 – October 30, 1976) was a French classical clarinetist and professor of clarinet. He was the most influential teacher of the first generation of American-born professional clarinetists. Biography Daniel Bonade was b ...

and

Anthony Gigliotti Anthony Gigliotti (May 13, 1922December 3, 2001) was an American clarinetist and music teacher. He was one of the world's most famous and most accomplished classical clarinet players for most of the second half of the 20th century.''Ex-family feared ...

. In 1941, he enrolled in the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

School of Music later graduating after he completed his US Army service. In 1972 he completed his Master of Arts Degree in Music, also at Ohio State. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he served in

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...

and

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

as a band musician. After the war, he played bass clarinet in the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra where he met his first wife, the bassoonist and critic Rosemary Curtin Hite. In addition he performed with the

Berkshire Music Festival The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Stockbridge and Lenox in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. The festival consists of a series of concerts, including symphonic music, ch ...

Orchestra at

Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the T ...

where he played under Serge Koussevitzky. From 1954 to 1978 he was professor of music at the

Capital University Capital University (Capital, Cap, or CU) is a private university in Bexley, Ohio. Capital was founded as the Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Ohio in 1830, and later was associated with that synod's successor, the Ame ...

Music Conservatory where he founded the Capital University

Clarinet Choir A clarinet choir is a musical ensemble consisting entirely of instruments from the clarinet family. It will typically include E, B, alto, bass, and contra-alto or contrabass clarinets, although sometimes not all of these are included, and ...

. He left Columbus in 1983, to move to New York City, where he specialized in customizing and fine tuning clarinets, working with the leading players of the time. Later he settled in

Fort Myers Fort Myers (or Ft. Myers) is a city in southwestern Florida and the county seat and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 92,245 in 20 ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. From the 1940s on, while teaching and playing, Hite also worked continuously on the development of a superior clarinet mouthpiece. With his second wife Jean Hite he founded the J&D Hite Mouthpiece Company in the 1980s. He was internationally recognized for his hand-finished J & D Hite

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

and

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

mouthpieces. The David Hite, and later J&D Hite, Premiere Mouthpiece was noted as one of the finest student mouthpieces made, enhancing the abilities of thousands of clarinet players throughout the U.S. The custom-made professional Hite mouthpiece was played by many symphony and band musicians. Following Hite's death in 2004 in Fort Myers, the Hite mouthpiece is now owned and distributed by the JJ Babbitt Company of Elkhart, Indiana.

References

External links

Hite Mouthpieces at JJ Babbitt.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hite, David 1923 births 2004 deaths American classical clarinetists Clarinet mouthpiece makers Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni 20th-century American musicians 20th-century classical musicians People from Perry County, Ohio United States Army personnel of World War II