Eric Whitacre

On May 2, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Whitacre announced that the sixth iteration of Virtual Choir would be an original song entitled Sing Gently.

Whitacre married Belgian opera singer Laurence Servaes in Maui, Hawaii, in March 2019.

On May 4, 2018, Whitacre announced that Virtual Choir 5 would be his 2015 piece Deep Field. Other Virtual Choir projects include 'Glow' written for the Winter Dreams holiday show at Disneyland Adventure Park, California. To date, the Virtual Choirs have registered more than 60 million views.

Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of the Universe is a 4k film for IMAX, cinema, projection in concert with live orchestra and for screenings at arts and science events. It is an audiovisual collaboration between Eric Whitacre, NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, Music Productions and 59 Productions. It premiered at Kennedy Space Center (Florida) in 2018 and has since been at Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, Dolby Theatre, the World Science Festival, Griffith Observatory, the American Astronomical Society Annual Meeting and in concert halls. The film is part of several STEAM education programs in North America, Europe and elsewhere.

Composed in 2018, The Sacred Veil is a new 12-movement work from Whitacre and poet/lyricist Charles Anthony Silvestri. Silvestri's wife, Julie, died of ovarian cancer at age 36 in 2005, leaving two young children. His texts (written collaboratively with Whitacre) and the score tell a story of courtship, love, loss and the search for solace. The LA Times described the work as 'memorably [celebrating] the precarious beauty of life, offering the welcome consolation of art and a momentary stay against our collective fate'. The work was premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, in February 2019.

The Virtual Youth Choir, in association with UNICEF, launched at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. It featured 2,292 singers aged 18 and under from more than 80 countries.

In June 2014, Whitacre gave a live webcast from the Kennedy Center and subsequently conducted a massed choir of 400 singers on the Mall, Washington D.C., to mark Flag Day and the bicentenary of "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Virtual Choir  4, "Fly to Paradise," contains 8,409 videos from 5,905 people from 101 different countries. It launched at the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace/BBC1 on July  11, 2013.

Since 2013, Whitacre has been releasing on his own independent label, UNQUIET, established as a joint venture with his managers at Music Productions. Feature releases on UNQUIET include Deep Field, Goodnight Moon and a 10-inch gatefold vinyl featuring Whitacre's choral cover of Trent Reznor’s "Hurt" and his setting of e.e. cummings' "i carry your heart".

Whitacre's first album as both composer and conductor on Decca Records, Light  & Gold, won a Grammy Award in 2012, and became the No.  1 classical album in the US and UK charts within a week of release. Whitacre's second album, Water Night, was released on Decca in April  2012 and featured performances from his professional choir the Eric Whitacre Singers, the London Symphony Orchestra, Julian Lloyd Webber and Hila Plitmann.

The choir performs music from the Renaissance through to the current day, including Lauridsen, Britten, and the work of their founder and conductor. The Eric Whitacre Singers made their BBC Proms debut in 2012 in a programme that included a collaboration with singer/songwriter Imogen Heap. The choir also sang at the Templeton Prize Laureate Ceremony for Archbishop Desmond Tutu alongside Annie Lennox, and the London African Gospel Choir. They work regularly with British soul artist Laura Mvula, and featured at the iTunes Festival, broadcast to 119 countries, performing with Hans Zimmer, and at an experiential installation for Anya Hindmarch CBE in 2018.

Whitacre is a founding member of BCM International, a quartet of composers consisting of himself, Steven Bryant, Jonathan Newman and James Bonney, which aspires to "enrich the wind ensemble repertoire with music unbound by traditional thought or idiomatic cliché." Whitacre made his BBC Proms debut with a late night Prom in 2012. In 2015, he returned to the Proms to conduct a program of all-American music with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Singers and BBC Chorus. In 2015, Whitacre wrote Deep Field for orchestra, chorus, and mobile app; the piece was inspired by the Hubble Deep Field images and audience members play electronica from their smartphone apps.

Whitacre has written for the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Chanticleer, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Tallis Scholars, the King's Singers, Dallas Winds, the Berlin Rundfunkchor, and the Minnesota Orchestra, among others. His musical, Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, won both the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Harold Arlen award and the Richard Rodgers Award, and earned 10 nominations at the Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Awards. Whitacre also worked with film composer Hans Zimmer, co-writing the Mermaid Theme for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and collaborating on Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. In 2011, he conducted the winning entries of the Abbey Road 80th Anniversary Anthem Competition, recording the London Symphony Orchestra and the Eric Whitacre Singers, in the Abbey Road Studio  1. Whitacre's Soaring Leap initiative is a dynamic one-day workshop where singers, conductors, and composers read, rehearse and perform several of his works.

Whitacre's Virtual Choir  2.0, was released in April  2011 and involved more than 2,000 voices from 58 countries. Virtual Choir 3, Water Night, written in 1995, combined 3,746 submissions from 73 countries and was released in April  2012. By the entry close date of February  1, 2012, 3,746 videos had been uploaded by 2,945 people in 73 countries, singing one or more parts of "Water Night". On April 15, the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the "Water Night" Virtual Choir video was shown in the new Titanic Belfast commemorative building.

From October to December  2010, Whitacre was a visiting Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, during Michaelmas (Autumn) Term. He composed a piece for the Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and worked with students in masterclasses and workshops. From 2011 to 2016, he was Composer in Residence at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. In 2016, Whitacre was appointed artist in residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In July 2017, he co-presented the Eurovision Choir of the Year.

Whitacre's first album with Decca, Light  & Gold, was released in October  2010. This album won the Grammy for Best Choral Performance in 2012. Whitacre's second Decca album, Water Night, was released in April  2012 in the United States.

On October  24, 2010, Whitacre conducted an all-American program with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Barbican London in a performance that featured his commission for the London Symphony Chorus entitled Songs of Immortality. In December  2010, Whitacre conducted the I Vocalisti choir in Hamburg, and was a guest conductor of the Christmas performance of the Berlin Rundfunkchor. In November  2010, Whitacre conducted Côrdydd, a Cardiff-based mixed choir, and friends in a concert of his work at the BBC Hoddinott Hall in the Wales Millennium Centre. He continues to develop his musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. A concert version was given at Carnegie Hall in 2010. Plans for the stage show and soundtrack extend into 2013.

Whitacre's Virtual Choir projects were inspired by a video sent to him of a young girl named Britlin Losee from Long Island, New York, singing one of his choral pieces. Singers record and upload their videos from locations all over the world. Each one of the videos is then synchronised and combined into one single performance to create the Virtual Choir. Whitacre began with a test run of Sleep, then Lux Aurumque in 2009 and then Sleep again in 2010. Whitacre's Virtual Choir performance of Lux Aurumque, has received 4.8  million views (as of August  2015), featuring 185 singers from 12 countries.

Whitacre has won awards from the Barlow international composition competition, American Choral Directors Association, American Composers Forum and in 2001 became the recipient of The Raymond W. Brock Commission given by the American Choral Directors Association. His musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings earned him a Richard Rodgers Award and received 10 nominations at the 2007 Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Awards. The album Cloudburst and Other Choral Works received a Grammy nomination in 2007 for Best Choral Performance. Later, his album "Light  & Gold" won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance in 2012.

From 1998 to 2017, Whitacre was married to Israeli singer Hila Plitmann.

Whitacre states that the first work he sang, Mozart's Requiem, changed his life. He studied composition with Ukrainian composer Virko Baley and choral conducting with David Weiller, completing his bachelor's degree in 1995. Whitacre credits Weiller with the inspiration that put the young composer on the musical path. At 21, he wrote his setting of "Go, Lovely Rose" for his college choir and presented the composition as a gift to David Weiller. Whitacre went on to earn his master's degree in Composition at the Juilliard School, where he studied with John Corigliano and David Diamond. At the age of 23 he completed his first piece for Wind Orchestra, "Ghost Train", which has now been recorded more than 40 times. Tom Leslie contributed to his interest in writing for wind ensembles. While at Juilliard he met his future wife, soprano Hila Plitmann, and two of his closest friends, composers Steven Bryant and Jonathan Newman. He lived in the State of Nevada until he was 25. He graduated in 1997 and moved to Los Angeles and following the success of "Ghost Train", he decided to become a full-time professional composer.

Eric Edward Whitacre (born January  2, 1970) is an American composer, conductor, and speaker known for his choral, orchestral, and wind ensemble music. In March  2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.