I love Eric Whitacre’s work, as it speaks deeply to me. The soaring sopranos, amazing blends of voices, interweaving of tight-textured harmonies with breath-takingly open chords all delight me. His Virtual Choir pieces, though, achieve the highest levels of awesome. This one, Cloudburst (where gets bonus points from me by basing it upon an Octavio Paz poem) hits me strongly.
Inspired by a Midwestern thunderstorm, the song captures the audio essence of the storm. From a musical perspective, I adore his use of clapping and finger snapping to achieve the feel of heavy rain. And his interweaving of harmony and dissonance really strikes a chord (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun).
Regarding the “virtual choir” nature of this work, in addition to the choristers in the auditorium, there are an 30 choristers currently standing in 30 countries, all Skyped in.
And this pushes technical boundaries, too. VOIP communications suffer from lag issues, and I delighted at the way Eric dealt with that: the piece was written to use it. Turning a liability into an asset: genius.
So, please, enjoy Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir performing “Cloudburst” at a TED talk.
I’m experimenting with posts other than poetry. And this video delighted me so very much, I wanted to share it with you. I hope you like this post, as well as the music. Let me know what you think in the comments, or via a “like” or share.