Eric Edward Whitacre is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March 2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The Dale Warland Singers (DWS) was a 40-voice professional chorus based in St. Paul, Minnesota, founded in 1972 by Dale Warland and disbanded in 2004. They performed a wide variety of choral repertoire but specialized in 20th-century music and commissioned American composers extensively. In terms of sound, the DWS was known for its purity of tone, intonation, legato sound and stylistic range. During their existence, the DWS performed roughly 400 concerts and recorded 29 CDs.
Cloudburst is a composition by Eric Whitacre for eight-part choir, with piano and percussion accompaniment. Whitacre began writing the piece in 1991, at the request of conductor Dr. Jocelyn K. Jensen for her high school choir - the final version of the piece was published in 1995. The text was adapted from Octavio Paz's poem El cántaro roto, and inspired by the experience of the composer witnessing a desert cloudburst.
Based in San Jose, California, The Choral Project is a mixed-voice choir founded in 1996 by artistic director and conductor Daniel D. Hughes. The group's vision is "to heal our world through music and words," while their mission is "to connect to one another through choral theater, education and musical excellence."
Agnus Dei(Lamb of God) is a choral composition in one movement by Samuel Barber, his own arrangement of his Adagio for Strings (1936). In 1967, he set the Latin words of the liturgical Agnus Dei, a part of the Mass, for mixed chorus with optional organ or piano accompaniment. The music, in B-flat minor, has a duration of about eight minutes.
The Kansas City Chorale is a professional 27-voice chorus conducted by Charles Bruffy. They perform a four concert series in Kansas City, tour nationwide, and perform with their sister choir, the Phoenix Chorale, also conducted by Mr. Bruffy. During his tenure as conductor, the chorus has achieved international acclaim. Mr. Bruffy, renowned for his fresh interpretations of both traditional and new music, was noted by The New York Times as a disciple of the late Robert Shaw.
Dale Warland is an American conductor, composer, founder of the Grammy-nominated Dale Warland Singers, scholar, teacher, choral consultant, and renowned champion of contemporary choral composers. Warland is one of only two choral conductors inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings is a musical work of theatre, with music by composer Eric Whitacre, lyrics by Whitacre and David Noroña, and book by poet Edward Esch, set in two acts. The innovative music combines styles of opera, musical theater, cinematic music, as well as electronic music techniques of trance music, ambient music, and techno to portray the story of an abandoned tribe of angels in search of their wings. Although it has various non-classical influences, it is meant to be performed by singers with operatic or musical theater backgrounds.
Eric William Barnum is an American composer of choral, instrumental, and vocal works. He received his doctorate in Choral Conducting at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is currently the Director of Choral Activities at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Water Night is one of composer Eric Whitacre's earliest works, written in 1995 during his attendance at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers. It is written for SATB choir a cappella with three, four and five-part divisi in vocal sections. The text is from Octavio Paz's poem Agua nocturna, adapted by Whitacre and translated by Muriel Rukeyser. According to Whitacre, "[t]he music sounded in the air" as he read the poem. Whitacre dedicated this composition to his friend Dr. Bruce Mayhall.
Sleep is a composition for a cappella choir by Eric Whitacre, with lyrics by Charles Anthony Silvestri. He composed it in 2000, setting a poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. When the lyrics were found still under copyright, Whitacre won Silvestri to write new lyrics to the existing music.
The Reger-Chor is a German-Belgian choir. It was founded in Wiesbaden in 1985 and has been conducted by Gabriel Dessauer in Wiesbaden. Since 2001 it has grown to Regerchor-International in a collaboration with the organist Ignace Michiels of the St. Salvator's Cathedral of Bruges. The choir performs an annual concert both in Germany and Belgium of mostly sacred choral music for choir and organ. Concerts have taken place regularly in St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden, and in the cathedral of Bruges in its series "Kathedraalconcerten". The choir performed additional concerts at other churches of the two countries and in the Concertgebouw of Bruges.
The London Oriana Choir is a choral group comprising around 120 singers, based in London, England. It was formed in 1973 by Leon Lovett, who acted as conductor and musical director. David Drummond became the choir's musical director in 1996, and Dominic Ellis-Peckham began his term as musical director in September 2013. The choir has developed a following through performances at London venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank, St Paul's Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields and St James' Piccadilly. In 2016 the choir launched a five year project 'Five 15' to promote the work of women composers with 15 new commissions from five composers, workshops and recordings. The five commissioned composers-in-residence were Cheryl Frances-Hoad (2016/17), Rebecca Dale (2017/18), Jessica Curry (2018/19), Anna Disley-Simpson (2019-2021), and Hannah Kendall (2021/22).
The Choir of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge is a Cambridge collegiate choir, under the direction of the musicologist and conductor David Skinner, with Senior Organ Scholar Emily Evans and Junior Organ Scholar Luca Myers. The composer Eric Whitacre spent three months in the College in 2010, later being appointed Composer in Residence for five years. The current composer in residence is Nico Muhly.
Kim André Arnesen is a Norwegian composer. He is mostly known for his choral compositions, both a cappella, accompanied by piano or organ, or large-scale works for chorus and orchestra. His first CD album "Magnificat" was nominated for Grammy Awards 2016 in the category Best Surround Sound Album. He has received wide notice with his choral works that has been performed by choirs all over the world. His "Cradle Hymn" was a part of the regional Emmy Prize winning show "Christmas in Norway". Arnesen is an elected member of the Norwegian Society of Composers.
Sofia Vokalensemble is a mixed chamber choir based in the Sofia Church in the Sofia parish in Stockholm, Sweden. The choir in its present form was founded in 1995 by conductor Bengt Ollén who still leads the artistic work.
Oreya is a mixed chamber choir a cappella, based in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. It was founded by Alexander Vatsek in 1986, and has been conducted by him. The choir, focused on Ukrainian sacred and secular music, has been successful in international concerts and competitions.
"The Dream Isaiah Saw" is a contemporary classical choral Christmas song, commissioned by the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh and composed in 2001 by Glenn L. Rudolph to the lyrics of Thomas H. Troeger's 1994 hymn "Lions and Oxen Will Feed in the Hay." It has become a holiday favorite. The hymn has become a signature piece of the Washington Chorus and has been performed at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performance Arts. The song has been independently released by many symphonic and college choirs. It is regularly performed by symphonic, college, church, and school choirs during Advent.
A virtual choir, online choir or home choir is a choir whose members do not meet physically but who work together online from separate places. Some choirs just sing for the joy of the shared experience, while others record their parts alone and send their digital recordings, sometimes including video, to be collated into a choral performance. There may be a series of rehearsals which singers can watch online, and their performance recordings may be made while watching a video of the conductor, and in some cases listening to a backing track, to ensure unanimity of timing. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 inspired a large growth in the number of virtual choirs, although the idea was not new.
Charles Anthony "Tony" Silvestri is an American poet and lyricist, and a lecturer in history at Washburn University.
