American composer Eric Whitacre is a rock star in choral circles. His music is performed by amateur and professional choirs alike, his chiseled good looks have earned him a modeling contract, and, Thursday night, he unveils his Virtual Choir 2.0 on YouTube. It features more than 2,000 singers from around the world, including this reporter.
I’ve been singing in real choirs since I was a kid, so I was intrigued to participate in a virtual one. I recently asked Whitacre how he came up with the concept.
“Well, it all started with this video ”” a young girl named Britlin Losee, who was 17 at the time, posted to YouTube a video of herself singing the soprano part to a piece of mine called ‘Sleep,’ ” Whitacre says.
I understand some of Jeff London’s reactions to this. I write church choral music (psst: would you like to get a new setting for Rite II?) and while I always run through all the parts to make sure they are all singable, and I have my music typesetting program playing the thing as I write it, there’s nothing quite like the rush of hearing it all come together in sung harmony for the first time. It always sounds so much more beautiful than I could imagine. Of course after that comes the work, and it would be awfully nice to have an engineer to take everyone’s best performances (especially the ones who don’t show up on Sunday) and stitch them all together.
Now, when is he going to do Spem in Alium?