Eric Whitacre

Agnostic, Artist, Blogger, Musician, Performer, Producer, Social entrepreneur

Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular and performed composers of our generation. An accomplished composer, conductor and lecturer, Whitacre was invited to address the UN Leader’s programme in 2010, and will speak at the TED conference in California in 2011. Early in 2010, Whitacre released the ground-breaking Virtual Choir recording of his piece Lux Aurumque on YouTube, receiving over 1,000,000 views in 2 months, featuring 185 singers from 12 countries. The Virtual Choir of 2011 will be released in April 2011 and involves more than 2,000 people from 58 different countries, singing Whitacre’s piece, Sleep. In May 2010, Eric was signed by Universal/Decca becoming one of a handful of composers to have secured an exclusive, long-term recording deal. His debut album, Light & Gold, released in October 2010, became the No 1 Classical Album in the US and UK charts within a week. His music has been featured on multiple commercial and independent recordings. Though he had received no formal training before the age of 18, his first experiences singing in college choir changed his life, and he completed his first concert work, Go, Lovely, Rose, at the age of 21. Eric went on to the Juilliard School, earning his Master of Music degree and studying with Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning composer, John Corigliano. Many of Whitacre's works have entered the standard choral and symphonic repertories and have become the subject of several recent scholarly works and doctoral dissertations. His works Water Night, Cloudburst, Sleep, Lux Aurumque and A Boy and a Girl are among the most popular contemporary choral works, and his Ghost Train, Godzilla Eats Las Vegas, and October have achieved equal success in the symphonic wind community. Recent and forthcoming commissions include works for Chanticleer, the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra, The King’s Singers and Conspirare. Whitacre has received composition awards from the Barlow International Composition Competition, the American Choral Directors Association and the American Composers Forum. In 2001, he became the youngest recipient ever awarded the coveted Raymond C. Brock commission by the American Choral Directors Association. As a conductor, Whitacre has appeared with hundreds of professional and educational ensembles throughout the world. In the last ten years he has conducted concerts of his choral and symphonic music in Japan, Australia, China, Singapore, South America and much of Europe including London, as well as dozens of American universities and colleges where he regularly conducts seminars and lectures with young musicians. In October 2010, Whitacre conducted the world premiere of “Songs of Immortality”, a work commissioned by the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra at The Barbican in London. Conducting engagements in 2010-11 include programs of his music in Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall and with the Berlin Radio Chorus at the Berliner Dom. Eric is a Visiting Fellow and Composer in Residence at Cambridge University, Sidney Sussex College, UK. Whitacre has received extraordinary acclaim for Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, a cutting edge musical combining ambient and techno electronica with choral, cinematic, and operatic traditions. Winner of the ASCAP Harold Arlen award, this musical also gained Whitacre the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award for most promising musical theatre composer. Following its sold-out run, the most recent production earned 10 nominations at the 2007 Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Awards, including one for Best World Premiere Musical. Of the Carnegie Hall performance in June 2010, the New York Times said declared the solos and ensembles as written by a ‘younger hipper Andrew Lloyd Webber, with fleeting hints of Bernstein and Sondheim,’ and said that ‘To call Mr. Whitacre a phenomenon is to sell his rapid ascent short.’ Mr. Whitacre lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their son.

Composer, Conductor