Eric Whitacre's Fourth Virtual Choir

The beginning of Eric Whitacre's third virtual choir, ‘Water Night’, opens with a raindrop. It proceeds to fall into the ocean and from that spot Eric Whitacre rises up, conducting his work of art. The virtual choir, 3746 people strong, ascends from the water and the song begins. He plays with the metaphoric idea that every person is just a raindrop in the ocean. But when every drop comes together a massive, powerful ocean emerges.

That song premiered in 2012. Fast forward to current day and he has decided to make his fourth virtual choir. This time ‘Bliss’ will be the song the choir will perform. ‘Bliss’ is a great choice because it doesn’t have very many words in it. Pronunciation was one of the problems with the last three videos. This will be less of a problem now because of the open vowel sounds that are a permeating theme in the piece, with words like “fly” and “paradise”. Also the voice ranges aren’t too challenging for any of the voice parts. For example, the alto part only goes from an Ab3 to a Db4. With these advantages even the most untrained voices can soar like beautiful birds in the sky.

Joining the virtual choir is a great experience to have. It is easy to sign up and is educational for beginners who want to learn more about music. To start the experience sign up on the virtual music part of his website. After that there will be a video of Eric Whitacre explaining how to pronounce the lyrics correctly and how to follow his conducting pattern. The camera silently sings while he moves his arms in a conducting pattern all his own. The next step is downloading the music and listening to different parts together and separately. This educates the people on how to read music and gives them an idea on how music comes together to form a huge collage. There are more options on how to upload the video this year. Up to eight videos are allowed from one person. The final due date for videos is June 10^th. Sometime in July the masterpiece will be revealed in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

The experience of joining the virtual choir is only positive. Learning comes from taking a leap of faith into something new, such as this. Hearing the choir and seeing all the future participants can make us take a step back to reflect on the bigger picture. From the possibility of making new friends from all over the world to learning how to read music for personal enjoyment, becoming apart of Eric Whitacre’s fourth virtual choir is full of opportunities. If nothing else, it shows people that they are apart of a big beautiful world. Every person has something positive to offer the world just like every singer is important to making the virtual choir happen. We are all raindrops in a magnificent ocean.