Portland State University’s Viking Pavilion will reverberate with hundreds of voices as Internationally acclaimed choral artist Eric Whitacre conducts a massive choir made up of 500 singers, including PSU’s renowned choirs, in a concert of his compositions at 4 p.m. March 1.
Whitacre will lead PSUs Chamber Choir, Rose Choir and Thorn Choir in an awe-inspiring performance of excerpts from his latest major work “The Sacred Veil.” The PSU choirs will be joined by a colossal honor choir made up of students from the Portland area’s finest high school choral programs (15 in all), forming a massed choir of 500 voices to perform several of Whitacre’s most popular works. The ensemble, accompanied by the PSU Wind Symphony, will conclude the concert with a rendition of Whitacre’s masterwork “Sleep.”
One of the world’s most well-known composers, Whitacre says that his life was forever changed when he sang Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Requiem” as a choral student at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
He was inspired to create his first choral composition as a gift for his college choir director. He went on to earn a master’s degree at the Juilliard School of Music. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Whitacre’s first album, “Light & Gold,” received a Grammy Award for Best Choral Recording, and his second album, “Water Night,” debuted at the No. 1 position on the iTunes and Billboard classical charts.
“Joining choir at the age of 18 changed everything for me,” Whitacre says. “And my career unfolded from there, first as a composer, and then as a conductor. I couldn't have imagined that I would become those two things when I was younger.” In fact, he grew up thinking that he would have a career in physics, because of his keen interest in science, he adds.
True to that early transformation, Whitacre has been an innovative force in the music world, bridging art and science. His film project “Deep Field: The Impossible Magnitude of our Universe” combined his original music with images from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep Field and visualizations by the Space Telescope Science Institute, and premiered at the Kennedy Space Center. Whitacre has also collaborated with film composer Hans Zimmer on music for “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice." His compositions are now included in the choral and symphonic repertories of professional and student orchestras and choirs.
Whitacre’s disarming, welcoming approach to choral and symphonic music is rooted in his understanding of the power of collaborative music-making to transform people’s lives.
“There’s good science that shows that singing in a choir or making ensemble music of nearly any kind increases test scores in subjects that have nothing to do with music. It increases empathy, it increases focus,” he says. “I think it just makes people better citizens.”
When PSU Barre Stoll Professor of Choral Music Ethan Sperry invited Whitacre to conduct the massed PSU and high school choirs, he says, “I was super excited about it simply because I knew the reputation of the musicians at Portland State. And I love the city. So the combination of Ethan and these great musicians and to be in Portland was an easy (decision) for me.”
PSU’s Chamber Choir, which “Classics Today” touted as “amongst the finest choirs in the world,” will release their newest album, “Translations: Music of Eriks Esenvalds,” on March 12. Concert-goers will be able to purchase the album at the March 1 concert. This album is the follow-up to “The Doors of Heaven: Music of Eriks Esenvalds,” the first university choir recording to reach number one on the Billboard classical charts.
The high school choirs performing with Eric Whitacre represent Cleveland, Delphian, Franklin, Grant, Heritage, Lake Oswego, Lincoln, Madison, Mt. View, Rex Putnam, St. Helens, West Linn, Wilson and Wilsonville high schools, as well as the Pacific Youth Choir. Of these schools’ choirs, Cleveland, Heritage, Madison, Rex Putnam and St. Helens are conducted by PSU alumni.
“It is always a thrill for me to work with a group this big, with all these young minds,” Whitacre says. “There’s an energy that high school students have that is unmatched, really, with any kind of ensemble I’ve worked with, professional or amateur. They’re very open and naïve in the best possible way. And I can tell that, when we have a musical experience that is true and authentic, they feel it to their bones. It’s transformative.”