If you haven’t seen it already, I’ve just launched my newly designed site at ericwhitacre.com. A huge thank you to Damien du Toit for his brilliant work on the redesign!

Damien was able to integrate my blog into my new site, so from now on all new blog posts will appear there. In a couple of weeks www.soaringleap.com will automatically redirect to ericwhitacre.com, so please change your bookmarks and rss feeds appropriately.

THANK YOU to all for you for visiting my blog over the past year and a half – it means the world to me that you would spend a little time with me here on the interwebs.

Woo hoo!

www.ericwhitacre.com

Last year a friend emailed me a link to this video, the lovely Britlin Losee singing the soprano part to Sleep, an a cappella choral work I wrote in 2000:

I kind of freaked out, because it occurred to me that if 100 people all recorded their respective parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass) we could line them all up and create a virtual choir. So I asked everyone to buy the same recording of Sleep from iTunes, a beautiful performance by the superb British choir Polyphony. Singers from around the world posted their individual parts, simply singing along to the recorded piece. Scott Haines volunteered to cut it together. Here’s how it came out:

I was thrilled (it actually sounded like music!), and I wanted to see if we could push the concept to the next level. So this time, I made my own conductor track, filming it in complete silence, hearing the music only in my head. Then I watched the video and played in the piano accompaniment part to my conductor track:

Then I offered the sheet music as a free download. As singers began posting their individual tracks, I called for ‘auditions’ for the soprano solo. Melody Meyers from Tennessee posted my favorite entry:

My goal with this ‘chapter’ of the Virtual Choir was to see if we could not just sing our parts separately and cut them together; I wanted to see if we could actually make music. There is a lot of rubato in my conducting (slowing down, speeding up) and some very specific dynamic gestures, and the singers responded beautifully. Here’s the final product:

When I saw the finished video for the first time I actually teared up. The intimacy of all the faces, the sound of the singing, the obvious poetic symbolism about our shared humanity and our need to connect; all of it completely overwhelmed me. And it must be said that a lot of the credit for it’s beauty should go to Scottie Haines, who spent untold hours editing and polishing the video. (BTW, Scottie and I have never met only met once in the ‘real world’, unlike 99% of the Virtual Choir, whom I’ve never ‘met’).

Lastly, I’m hoping that this is just the beginning. My ultimate goal is to write an original piece for the Virtual Choir and have it receive it’s world premiere in cyber-space, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people singing alone, together.

Woo hoo!

Congratulations to everyone – truly an extraordinary thing you’ve all created. And a huge thank you to Scottie Haines, who beautifully produced the video.

Hmm… What should we do for the NEXT one? WOO HOO!

Listening to all of the videos I think I understood for the first time just how difficult the soprano part to Lux Aurumque is. (Yes, I know the other parts aren’t a walk in the park, either). It requires such breath control, and it sits in a tricky part of the register, and those vowel changes are brutal. So glad I don’t have to sing it.

Please say hello to your 2010 soprano scholarship winner, Ms. Julie Pajuheshfar from Henderson, Nevada. (Nice shirt, Julie). And again, to all of the sopranos: bravissima! Beautiful, clear voices all around.

I suppose that what I was looking for above all – and this applies to all the voice parts – was not only a nice voice but a genuine sense of that most ephemeral quality, musicality. The two alto winners have completely different vocal styles (and yes, a healthy amount of vibrato), but man alive are they both musical.

So please say hello to our TWO alto scholarship winners, and congratulations to all of the altos who applied; it truly was an exceptional group of women.

Evangelyna Etienne, from Malden, Mass:

And Lauren Collis from Ontario, Canada:

Here is the poem:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

And here are the first three pages of the sheet music (sorry for the typos – this is a first draft from the publisher):

maggie and milly pgs 1-3

And here is a rough recording from the concert last month at Denver University, the Lamont Chorale singing; JoAnn Gudvangen-Brown, pianist. It was the first time I conducted the piece:

The recipient of the 2010 Virtual Choir tenor scholarship is Robbie Bennet from Tulsa, Oklahoma. (And it’s not because of his youtube name). Congratulations Robbie, and to all of the other applicants!

Here is Steve’s welcome video, introducing the entire series:

And here is the first full installment, a beautifully detailed and honest look at his process as he composes:

So here it is: the winning Bass scholarship video. If this is you, please contact Iris Derke at DCINY as soon as possible to set up arrangements for the June 15 concert. (iris@dciny.org). I’ll announce the other voice parts (soprano, alto, tenor) in the next few days.

Congratulations to Jamal from Dallas, Texas!

In honor of the occasion, here’s a video that perfectly captures how excited I am: