Eric Whitacre

"Words like violence, break the silence, come crashing in, into my little world." The mysterious sound and darkness behind the masterful artist, Eric Whitacre. This man makes world-class music and makes a choir sound like angels. His songs incorporate a mix of light and dark meanings to convey whatever message he feels worthy, and this year for the first time my choir is taking on one of his songs. We may not sound like his choir does, but hopefully our performance will be able to convey his image.

Eric Whitacre is a next level type of composer and song writer. He takes a simple lyric line and lines it with intense, intricate undertone and overtone patterns. Also he is able to conduct a choir in such a way that all of the vowels are the same shape, and it sounds like 8 singers, instead of hundreds of singers singing 8 parts. The song we are trying in my choir this year is Enjoying the Silence. This song is one of his darker songs because it describes the death of a loved one. The overall pattern of the song starts soft and dark, grows to a forte middle, and ends with a silent whisper, as if the person has passed away. The genius in his composing is nothing that I have seen before though. He is a man ahead of his time. That's why whenever we rehearse his song, we give it an extra sort of special attention. We treat it differently than all of the other songs we rehearse and perform. It's not that the other songs aren't as worthy, it's just his song is in a whole new category of respect compared to the others.

Another interesting thing this man is able to do is make a virtual chorus. On YouTube he takes videos of individuals singing his songs, and is able to combine them in a way so that his song sounds like a choir singing it all in unison. Now that's talent. Being able to blend hundreds of voices that started all individually to make one great sound is nearly impossible, and he does it.

I listen to his songs all of the time because they are peaceful and help me calm down and focus on what I need to do. I can't wait to represent him in our next choir concert and sing one of the greatest modern day composers' masterpiece.

"Silence...Silence...Enjoy the Silence..."