Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacre
Eric Whitacreis a Grammy-winning American composer, conductor, and speaker, known for his choral, orchestral and wind ensemble music. He is also known for his "Virtual Choir" projects, bringing individual voices from around the globe together into an online choir. In March 2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth2 January 1970
CountryUnited States of America
When you look back on music history, it falls into these neat periods, but of course, the period you yourself are living through seems totally scattered and chaotic.
There must be four or five hundred choirs here in London alone. In a way, there's nowhere else on Earth I could go and get this level and passion for singing in the one place.
To have a live choir there on the stage and then these singers from different countries signing with us in real time through Skype, it's as if there aren't borders anymore.
I don't feel like I'm an artist with a capital 'A.'
A really good poem is full of music.
Many composers use software to write music - programs like Finale or Sibelius. There are also recording programs. I should say I'm still very old-fashioned, I still use pencil and paper. But almost every composer I know does it the 'new way.'
I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.
The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.
I'm a self-confessed geek, and my whole concept of music at first was entirely electronic. In many ways, it turned out to be an advantage. I was so green, so utterly naive about the nature of classical music, that I did things that made me look totally, deliberately unorthodox.
I happen to be one of the people who believe that the Internet is a force of good, and I'm very optimistic about it.
Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.
The terror of performing never goes away. Instead, you get very, very comfortable being terrified.
I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.
For me, the virtual choir has taught me that, if anything, the Internet builds these post-national tribes, people finding each other anyway they can.