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Composer Eric Whitacre's new Hyperion release marks a most enjoyable collection of his works for (mostly) unaccompanied chorus.
Whitacre's overnight rise to becoming one of America's most successful choral composers is nothing if not remarkable. Like many of the younger generation of composers, he was raised on an omnivorous musical diet that made no distinction between "high" and "low" art. He...
Last year Stephen Layton and Polyphony gave us a very fine CD devoted to the music of the American composer, Morten Lauridsen (b.1943)
Now they follow that up with a programme of music by another, younger American composer, Eric Whitacre. Simply as a point of reference I’d say that anyone who responds positively to Lauridsen’s music should warm equally to Whitacre’s muse. I first encountered his...
You hear about huge advance orders for the latest CD by the biggest, hottest pop superstar, or for the most fashionably hip tell-all book--but when the buzz is about a CD of classical choral music? Yes, there have been big successes by vocal groups during the last decade or two – Anonymous 4, the King's Singers, the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, the Tallis Scholars, the Bulgarian women's...
For months I've been driving around entranced, listening to Cloudburst, a stunning CD from British choral group Polyphony. All of the songs on the disc are by 30 something American composer Eric Whitacre, who has a way of contracting and expanding chords with carefully crafted dissonance and resolution. Members of Polyphony, directed by Stephen Layton, sing of sleep, love, dreams, passion, and...
