When you think of a choir, you likely put a descriptor before it: a
school choir, a church choir, a community choir. Singing in a chorus
usually means you’re standing within a large group of people, belting
out songs and nailing those harmonies together. But what happens when
you can’t gather in person to sing?
That’s where virtual choirs come in. Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre has been putting them together for more than a decade, long before the pandemic left us stuck at home—and his most recent collaboration, which debuted on YouTube July 19, is his biggest project yet.
Whitacre started organizing Virtual Choirs in 2009, when a fan uploaded a video of herself singing one of his choral compositions. He saw the video, then asked others to record themselves singing the other parts of the same composition to form a “choir.” That first group featured 185 singers, and each one since has grown larger and larger, to more than 8,000 voices for the fifth performance in 2018
This year, signups for Virtual Choir have skyrocketed. More than 17,000 singers from around the world found a way to participate in the sixth recording from the isolation of their own homes. They all learned “Sing Gently,” a song Whitacre composed during the pandemic. “Even early on, you’d be walking down the street in masks and you’d go out of your way to not pass someone,” Whitacre says. “A random stranger would become a threat. That was hard to see, and I was feeling that all over.” So the lyrics to “Sing Gently” encourage people to “live with compassion and empathy, and do this together,” he says.
That’s where virtual choirs come in. Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre has been putting them together for more than a decade, long before the pandemic left us stuck at home—and his most recent collaboration, which debuted on YouTube July 19, is his biggest project yet.
Whitacre started organizing Virtual Choirs in 2009, when a fan uploaded a video of herself singing one of his choral compositions. He saw the video, then asked others to record themselves singing the other parts of the same composition to form a “choir.” That first group featured 185 singers, and each one since has grown larger and larger, to more than 8,000 voices for the fifth performance in 2018
This year, signups for Virtual Choir have skyrocketed. More than 17,000 singers from around the world found a way to participate in the sixth recording from the isolation of their own homes. They all learned “Sing Gently,” a song Whitacre composed during the pandemic. “Even early on, you’d be walking down the street in masks and you’d go out of your way to not pass someone,” Whitacre says. “A random stranger would become a threat. That was hard to see, and I was feeling that all over.” So the lyrics to “Sing Gently” encourage people to “live with compassion and empathy, and do this together,” he says.
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