Eric Whitacre returns at the Great Broadcasting Choir

The hottest thing in choral music Eric Whitacre makes a big impression as a conductor and as a composer, although not everyone is immediately charmed by his music. With the Netherlands Radio Choir he proves once again: 'the fuzz is not about nothing'.

'Fusion between classical' and popular'
His work received this stamp from critics: a fusion between classical and modern popular music that gets right under the skin. He is both vilified for his populist music' and praised for being the hottest thing in choral music.
Eric Whitacre himself claims to have become a conductor and composer by accident, but his choral works such as Go, lovely rose, Water Night, Cloudburst, Sleep and The Seal Lullaby are now part of the standard choral repertoire worldwide. Moreover, the Groot Omroepkoor could hardly wish for a conductor with a better understanding of the human voice.

Commissioned composition: The sacred veil
The sacred veil, written on commission to the NTR Saturday Matinee and others, once again contains all the ingredients that make the composer Whitacre as beloved as he is controversial. He based the work on a poignant cycle of poems by his friend Tony Silvestri, who used it to deal with the death of his young wife. Both the text and the music sing of death not as an end, but as a way through a mirror, a way into another dimension.