A conductor, the internet, and a choir-oh my!

I love music.However, I don’t play any instruments, although I took a spin at the ivories and recorder in third grade (does anybody remember that instrument?), and learned the very basics of guitar from a friend in seventh. I did take voice lessons as a young adult, and enjoyed them immensely, but my voice took a hit (little pun here) when I passed out in a hospital emergency room, and my forehead/eyebrow and my voicebox made hard contact with the edge of a metal table on my way to the floor. No, I was not the patient, at least up until that point.

But I digress.

I stand in awe of music’s ability to speak to us, to touch us in a way that often the written word cannot. The sound of a choir, their notes seamlessly blending as one, lifts us on the waves of their crescendos and gently enfolds us in their pianissimos.

To sing in a choir is a true privilege indeed. To be invited to join a group that is over 2,000 members strong-well, that just defies expression. And then there’s the mechanics: How do you conduct a 2,000 member choir, especially if the invitation is worldwide, and the members are performing from home?

Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre tackled that question.

He started small, and posted the idea of a virtual choir on his blog along with the music and a video of himself conducting “Lux Aurumque”. He invited people to record themselves singing their parts, and then upload their videos to Youtube. He then combined the videos and published the results below.

Following the success of “Lux”, Whitacre put out another invitation, this time to perform his commissioned work “Sleep”. I love the juxtaposition of the humble individual videos-over 2,000-shot at homes around the globe-in 58 countries-where you can see glimpses of personal lives in the background, against the grand landscape of the planets created as part of the final production.

So, what do you get when you combine a conductor, the internet and choirs of one? Oh, my!
Sweet, sweet harmonic goodness to soothe your spirits. Enjoy!