Eric Whitacre is now the unquestioned superstar of American choral composers. His marriage of poetry with beauty of sound creates a unique and enchanting sonic world. A wide selection of his most well-known music is brilliantly captured on this CD by the Elora Festival Singers of Canada.

the Elora Festival Singers shine here from start to finish. Excellent recorded sound reveals their every note and nuance, and the folding booklet contains excellent and revealing notes…At last we have a top-notch Whitacre collection for the discriminating but budget-conscious choral fan.

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Even before his YouTube Virtual Choir recording of “Lux aurumque” (Light of gold) became an international hit, Nevada-born Eric Whitacre, 40, had become the golden boy of American choral music. The reasons for his fame are abundantly clear on this new, budget CD from Naxos. His music, with its easily assimilated, almost otherworldly strangeness and ethereal beauty, touches a deep core within our being.

This recording will appeal to admirers of well-crafted choral music that judiciously incorporates contemporary musical techniques. American composer Eric Whitacre (b. 1970) has cultivated a style where added notes and tone clusters are the norm in higher registers. With careful attention to pitch content, texture, register, and dynamics, seldom is an unattractive sound heard. Though based in innovations by other composers great and small, Whitacre’s music shows special artistry in focusing technique to ends. In Her Sacred Spirit Soars, simply thickening and thinning sonorities as pitches rise and fall conveys the sacred spirit of the music’s long-breathed motion. I particularly like the mystical sense in Lux aurumque (Light of Gold), about which the composer aptly speaks of spiritual processes: “blossoming” and “surrendering” to light.

There are effective piano-accompanied settings, of E.E. Cummings’ little tree with its ecstatic ending, and of Octavio Paz’s Little Birds which includes whistling, repeated consonants and quasi-aleatoric (random) singing. I prefer the sensitivity to mood in the short lyrical works; When David Heard and percussion-enhanced Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine have longer minimalist passages I find less convincing.

Noel Edison’s splendid Elora Festival Singers are up to Eric Whitacre’s every challenge. Perfectly pitched, vibrato-less sopranos in multiple parts produce sounds of wonderful life. All sections contribute to the tour-de-force with well-balanced sonorous blocks and long-decaying tones evoking reverberant space. Which brings me to close by noting the fine production and engineering by Bonnie Silver and Norbert Kraft of this important recording.

A must-have recording of the honest, transparent music of Eric Whitacre

It is largely due to the discerning advocacy of Stephen Layton and Polyphony that the choral music of Eric Whitacre (b1970) has enjoyed such a meteoric success in the UK in recent years. Several of the items on their “Cloudburst” disc (Hyperion) are also included in this equally polished release.

In the last decade Eric Whitacre has quietly become one of the most performed American composers at home and increasingly so abroad, an impressive achievement for one who has just turned 40 this year.

Whitacre, who studied with John Corigliano, has written music for wind band, orchestra and even an eclectic pop musical, Paradise Lost, “combining trance, ambient and techno electronica with choral, cinematic, and operatic traditions.” But it is his a cappella choral music for which he is primarily known, and this present disc makes a fair sampler of his works in the genre.

Eric Whitacre is the flagbearer in the new generation of choral music composers, thanks to music that’s lush, consonant, harmonically sophisticated, but, unlike the older Morten Lauridsen, more than unending streams of gorgeousness. Again and again in this collection of mostly shortish works—including oft-recorded pieces such as I thank you God for most this amazing day and the lesser-known Birds , one of his many settings of Octavio Paz poems—Whitacre stands above the others thanks to his extra spark of musical invention as well as his instincts for gentle surprise and knowing when an idea has run its course.

There are highly personal elements throughout the choral music of Eric Whitacre (born 1970), and they are heard in abundance on a new CD of 11 of his works. Eight of these pieces are a cappella and give Whitacre ample scope for his eclectic mix of contemporary techniques and sounds with vocal music’s traditional emphasis on precision of enunciation and beauty of tone. The longest piece here, When David Heard, gives the Elora Festival Singers nearly 13 minutes of sometimes-intricate, sometimes-direct communication, and Noel Edison paces them well—their textural clarity and warmly blended sound are quite effective. The other a cappella pieces on this CD are Her Sacred Spirit Soars, A Boy and a Girl, Water Night, This Marriage, Lux aurumque (here translated incorrectly as “Light of Gold,” the title actually means “Light and Gold”), I thank you God for most this amazing day, and Sleep. There are also two pieces with Leslie De’Ath on piano (little tree and Little Birds), plus one with Carol Bauman on percussion (the very interesting Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine). Every work here displays Whitacre’s personal style—which, because it is personal, will not be to everyone’s taste, and indeed at times seems more enjoyable to sing than to listen to (the 62-minute CD seems longer than it is). One reason the works are interesting to perform but not always as pleasing to hear is the profusion of what have come to be called “Whitacre chords,” which are sevenths or ninths that often contain suspended seconds or fourths. Used from time to time, they create unusual coloration in a cappella music. Used frequently, as they are by Whitacre, they tend to grate on the ear after a while (but are challenging and quite interesting for the performers to sing). Add to the chordal structure a tendency to use frequent metrical and rhythmic changes and you have works that give performers a real workout but that do not always bring equal pleasure to listeners—at least not when they go on for an hour or more. Individual pieces and parts of pieces on this CD are fascinating, but the disc as a whole is more of an enthusiast’s delight than anything else. Still, Whitacre does have enthusiasts, and they will surely welcome this well-performed heaping helping of his choral music.

Whitacre, 40, is among the most performed American composers of the moment. You can hear why from this sing-easy disc of simple harmonies for amateur choirs, rooted in the Anglican tradition. Blindfold, he could be mistaken for John Rutter. Before long, my ear is begging for a challenging interval, or a tempo change. Noel Edison conducts the Elora Festival Singers. Perhaps I should try Whitacre’s instrumental and electronic output.

At 40, Nevada native Eric Whitacre is already one of the world’s most popular choral composers. He has two major British gigs, and there are annual festivals named for him in Australia and Italy. One of his pieces has eight recordings by different groups in the catalog.

This CD by a distinguished Canadian ensemble conducted by Noel Edison holds some of his most popular works and several less-familiar ones. The transparent glow of the higher voices is aptly suited to Whitacre’s eclectic and luminous style.

These aren’t pieces for church choir. Most have secular texts by poets such as Emily Dickinson, E.E. Cummings and Octavio Paz. Occasionally there’s instrumental accompaniment such as piano or percussion.

The first impression of American composer Eric Whitacre, 40, is his absorbing harmonic language. Uncomplicated, yet well upholstered with the interval of the “second” adding crunch to the tonal harmonies. A lot happens underneath the variety of texts here, but the music unfolds so organically, one senses neither text nor tone could function independent of the other.

Nevadan composer Eric Whitacre specialises in music for choir and wind, and this survey of recent choral works is an excellent introduction to the former. Those fond of the sublime sonorities of Arvo Part and John Tavener take note: Whitacre too works in crafting music of incredible beauty, vast glistening harmonies which possess a transcendental purity while utilising contemporary, almost idiosyncratic structures.

The Elora Festival Singers, one of Canada’s finest professional choirs, present eleven of his most popular works based on a mix of sacred and secular texts from Rumi, Octavio Paz, e. e. cummings, the Bible and Charles Anthony Silvestri. The pieces are as much about atmosphere as music.

The liner notes for this new album—issued a few weeks before the start of the annual Elora Festival—are the most overwrought and opaque introduction to a composer’s music I have ever read. So, don’t read. Listen, and be seduced by 61 minutes of 21st-century choral bonbons, as rendered by one of Canada’s finest professional choirs and their founding music director of three decades, Noel Edison. Mining poetry from several different cultures, adventurous U.S. composer Eric Whitacre blends the clear textures of minimalism, the complex tone clusters of the late-20th century and the slippery tonal centre of 100 years ago with the polyphonic Renaissance, creating a natural tension that envelops us in enchanting, atmospheric aural worlds. The 11 tracks are a mix of sacred—like the emotionally wrenching setting of “When David Heard that Absalom Was Slain”— and secular, like the epic “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine,” which shows off Whitacre’s debt to the Renaissance most clearly. The Elora Festival Singers are flawless. Sit back, and let these masters take over your senses.

Composer Eric Whitacre is all about text and context. As he explains in the liner notes for his latest CD, Choral Music, just issued on Naxos, “I simply try to quiet myself enough to hear the notes already hidden below the poet’s words.” The result of his self-quieting is 11 musical happenings, a set of works that can be enjoyed individually or in one lush choral bender.

I can’t possibly forget the first time I heard about the music of Eric Whitacre—it was moments after the inaugural concert at Los Angeles’ brand-new Walt Disney Hall, in 2003. I’d had the honor of co-hosting an NPR live broadcast that night and was leaving the hall when I bumped into an old friend, the L.A. Philharmonic’s audio producer, Fred Vogler. Fred, in turn, introduced me to a friend of his, a young man named Eric Whitacre who looked exactly like a rock star—long dirty blond hair, a hint of stubble on his chiseled face.

“He’s one of the most frequently performed choral composers of our time,” Vogler said. I nodded politely, thinking, “Of course he is, Fred. And I’m Clara Schumann.”

“His music has struck a universal chord in an area that no longer seems to be universal,” writes annotator Tim Sharp. You can say that again. The last disc of Whitacre’s choral music by the choral group Polyphony, called “Cloudburst” was some of the most sumptuous choral music of our time. So is this, whether Whitacre takes his texts from Rumi, Octavio Paz, E.E. Cummings, the Bible or Charles Anthony Silvestri. If any of this were the first music you heard in the afterlife, you’d know right away that your news for eternity was good—very good. frankly, that’s what this music sounds like.

Not only is the ensemble Elora Festival Singers founded and led by Noel Edison, the resident choir of the summer festival held about an hour west of Toronto, but its concerts, tours, and recordings have established it as one of the freshest Canadian chamber choirs. It’s an exceptionally fine group, with a warm, well-blended, youthful sound, and the singers’ discipline and technical prowess are evident in everything they sing. This album devoted to the choral music of Eric Whitacre includes almost half of the works for mixed voices he had written up to 2009, and it’s an impressive collection. Whitacre is a master of the lusciously rich harmonic language that has become the lingua franca of tonal choral music in the new century, but he also brings an exceptionally lively and unencumbered imagination to the texts he sets, freely using non-traditional vocal techniques that are more often associated with the avant-garde, but in ways that seems entirely organic within his relatively conservative tonal context. The works that use those devices, such as “Little Birds,” with a text by Octavio Paz, with its unembarrassed and entirely convincing use of bird sounds, are among the most memorable. “Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine,” one of his most spectacular works, is also vocally adventurous, and his incorporation and transformation of polyphonic madrigals is nothing short of stunning in its dramatic and emotional impact. Even the works that are more conventional, such as “Her sacred spirit soars,” “Lux aurumque,” and “Sleep,” have the imprint of Whitacre’s distinctive musical personality. “When David Heard” is based on a single sentence, King David’s lament over the death of his son Absalom. It lasts 13 minutes and has an austerity and gravity reminiscent of Arvo Pärt. Naxos’ sound is clean and warmly present, with just enough resonance for this repertoire. The album makes an excellent introduction to Whitacre’s music and should be of strong interest to fans of new choral music.

Aside from the “Cloudburst” album on Hyperion, most of my exposure to the music of 40-year old Nevada native Eric Whitacre has been on choral compilations, though I know that at least one instrumental work for Wind Band has also been recorded on Naxos. Whitacre loves superimposed harmonies and lingering dissonances, not unlike some of the music of John Tavener, though I think Whitacre the better composer overall. There is an ecstatic nature to his music, but even this is becoming cliché these days as more and more choral composers are indulging themselves with this sort of static, soprano-intense sound clusters not unlike what Ligeti was doing 30 years ago, but contextually more significant and definitely more accessible.

Although still a relatively young man—he was born in 1970—Whitacre’s music is becoming increasingly popular with choirs and choral societies. We’ve certainly sold hundreds of his choral parts in the last couple of years, with pieces like Lux Aurumque and Water Night leading the way. It’s interesting, beautiful, music with original textures and sonorities, set to a wide variety of texts. Performed by a top Canadian chamber choir, the Elora Festival Singers, conducted by Noel Edison, it’s a highly enjoyable fiver’s worth.

Eric Whitacre’s choral works have been generously surveyed on disc, but only a handful of choirs have yet devoted an entire recording to his music. He couldn’t have more luminous or illuminating interpreters than the Elora Festival Singers, a choir that I’ve heartily praised in the past and that deserves the same recognition here. Although there is much duplication, this program makes a fine companion to the 2005 recording by Polyphony (Hyperion) that I previously recommended.