Eric Whitacre

Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today’s most popular and widely performed composers. His works are programmed worldwide and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Born in Nevada in 1970, Whitacre is a graduate of The Juilliard School. He is currently Visiting Composer at Pembroke College, Cambridge University (UK) and is an Ambassador for the Royal College of Music (London). He recently completed two terms as Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Current commissions include a new work for distinguished violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and a major new choral composition to premiere in 2024. Recent projects include the album Home recorded with VOCES8 released on Decca Classics and an orchestral piece - Prelude in C - commissioned by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra (USA). Whitacre is proud to be a Yamaha Artist.

Whitacre’s compositions have been widely recorded and his debut album as a conductor on Universal, Light and Gold, went straight to the top of the charts, earning a Grammy. As a guest conductor he has drawn capacity audiences to concerts with many of the world’s leading orchestras and choirs in venues from Carnegie Hall (New York) to the Royal Albert Hall (London). Insatiably curious and a lover of all types of music, Whitacre has worked with legendary Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer, as well as British pop icons Laura Mvula, Imogen Heap and Annie Lennox.

His composition, Deep Field, was inspired by the achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope and became the foundation for a pioneering collaboration with NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, and film-makers 59 Productions. His long-form work The Sacred Veil, a profound meditation on love, life and loss, was premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by the composer, and released on Signum Records. Recently, Whitacre launched the Virtual School with its first course “The Beautiful Mess: Masterclass in Composition and Creativity”.

A charismatic speaker, Whitacre has given keynote addresses for TED, Apple, Google, the United Nations Speaker’s Program, in education and for numerous global institutions. His collaboration with Spitfire Audio has resulted in two trail-blazing vocal sample libraries which are used by composers the world-over.