Wilbur Whitta is an award-winning Australian pianist and composer.

Hailing from Ngunnawal/Canberra, Wilbur became a mainstay of the Gadigal/Sydney jazz and improvised music community before relocating to Switzerland in 2025. He has performed across the globe, appearing alongside some of the world’s best musicians, and frequents the local stage throughout Australia.

Wilbur’s music defies easy categorisation: his works confront a range of current environmental and social issues, but may just as easily employ humour (often doing both at once), and all the while effortlessly transport the listener between moments of fierce intensity, haunting darkness or deliberate irony.

Wilbur’s first release ‘Wildfire’ (ABC Jazz, 2024), for quartet, is rooted in the concept of “composition leading improvisation”, while his forthcoming release ‘Now Play Something Upbeat’ (Loumi Records, 2026) is a collection of solo improvised works for piano and organ.

Wilbur was one of five musicians selected from across the world for the prestigious Focusyear band 2026 in Basel, Switzerland. He was selected as a finalist in the Freedman Fellowship awards and the Australian National Jazz Awards, and, while living in London, won the UK-based Dankworth Jazz Composition Award.

Praise for Wilbur Whitta:

“Wilbur Whitta’s trio … was utterly engrossing in its sheer playfulness and its ability to make jazz minus the cliches … with Whitta’s playing effortlessly blending blitheness and conviction” – Sydney Morning Herald

“Wilbur Whitta is an exceptionally talented young pianist/composer who I expect will make a substantial contribution to Australian music in the years to come” – Mike Nock

“He is prodigiously talented … I believe he will go on to become an important voice in the genre, both through his piano playing and through his compositions” – Kit Downes

“His extraordinary talent is confirmed here with the quartet Wildfire performing nine of his compositions, played with absolute authority and conviction” – The Australian