Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre is a superstar among composer-conductors for choir. He's tall and thin, with shoulder-length blond hair and a trendy beard. Handsome in a contemporary way. He's famous for running a "virtual choir," where people can access the music from all over the world, and send him a YouTube video of themselves singing their part. He then puts everyone together in a video.
The music feels other-worldly, with many odd chords, sustained notes, and not always a lot of melody. We sang one of his pieces in the choir I joined in Crescent City. I found it hard to sing, and I didn't like it until it started to come together, and then it was sublime.

My friend Faith is a vocal student at West Virginia University, and she posted on Facebook that Eric Whitaker was coming to conduct a concert Saturday afternoon at 3:30 at WVU's Creative Arts Center. The timing wasn't great because Joe and I were leaving the house at 4 A.M. Sunday to fly to Israel and I hadn't packed.

Still, I decided to go and walked 1.5 miles to the CAC in windy 66 ○ weather. Lucky I did, because there was a basketball game at two at the Colosseum across the street and traffic and parking were impossible.

Whitacre attended University of Nevada Las Vegas, and the choir director there at the time (probably twenty years ago) is now the director of the CDC. That was the connection. In an interview at the start of the concert, Whitacre said he couldn't read music when he started college, although he played several instruments. He said he joined the choir because there was a pretty girl who sang in it. It took him seven years to graduate.

He answered some questions. John Lennon is his favorite male pop vocalist. He said that to be successful in music, one needs to be "honest" and "vulnerable" and "show up on time." He said he decided to do music because he couldn't imagine working in an office.

As to the music, there were eight short pieces, one with WVU's Chamber Choir, five with high school choirs, and two with everyone, including random kids from school choirs that didn't perform.

All of the pieces were gorgeous, and not easy. The singing was great, much better than I expected. I thought about the kids in these choirs, from little towns in the middle of nowhere, in places where football and basketball players are celebrities and boys who sing are bullied. Even in Morgantown, thousands of people were at the
WVU-Nebraska basketball game, while this concert audience was mostly choir members, their families and friends. I thought about what a high school choir director makes in salary compared to the WVU basketball coach.

I loved being at this concert. Witacre was charming and modest, and conducted the high school choirs with compassion and grace. I cried for the kids and their teachers, who create and understand great art, even as it isolates them from their peers.

At the end, I felt emotional from being in the presence of great art and young artists just coming into their own lives. I walked home by six, as it was getting dark. Joe and I had dinner out, then came home and packed. We slept a few hours, drove in the dark to Pittsburgh Airport, and we are now at Newark Airport, waiting for our flight to Israel.