Renowned conductor, Eric Whitacre, put together a spectacular display of musical genius with the help of thousands.
After a fan uploaded a video of herself singing on YouTube, Whitacre got the idea to make a virtual choir that snowballed into more than 4,000 different singers pitching in. Starting with just 185 singers, his vision has blossomed to include thousands of people worldwide from countries all over the world.
This will blow your mind, how they did this is extraordinary!
Whitacre is a Grammy-winning choral conductor who put together a virtual choir with over 4,000 voices.
Whitacre did a TED Talk explaining how the magical idea came to life. It started when a fan of his posted a video of herself singing his soprano part in “Sleep.” At first, he just thought about how amazing it would be to have 50 people singing in videos at the same time.
“I had this idea. If I could get 50 people to all to do this same thing, sing their part soprano, alto, tenor and bass wherever they were in the world, post their videos to YouTube. We could cut it all together and make a virtual choir.” Whitacre said during his Ted Talk.
Whitacre posted to his blog calling for singers and quickly got responses from people all over the world.
After he made a video of himself conducting, he went through all the uploaded videos and selected the best ones for the solos. That’s when Scott Haines approached Whitacre to ask if he could put the video together for him. Delighted to have the help, he agreed to let Haines handle the production.
Scott did all the editing, making sure everything lined up perfectly. Once the video was complete, it was so touching it brought Whitacre to tears. As moving as the video is, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people had that reaction.
“I actually was moved to tears when I first saw it. I just couldn’t believe the poetry of all of it, these souls all on their own desert islands, sort of sending these electronic messages in bottles to each other.”
When the video was finished, thousands of singers worldwide were singing in unison and it was beautiful!
You can see a sea of faces sitting in front of their computer screens, with their gorgeous voices all perfectly blended together. The virtual choir was the first of its kind—never before had someone composed a choir complete on the internet with so many singers.
So it was no surprise that the virtual choir quickly went viral on YouTube. The video attracted music lovers from all parts of the globe, deeply inspiring many of them. Millions of people viewed the stunning musical accomplishment.
Over 6.1 million people viewed the video on YouTube, with almost 50,000 likes.
Whitacre has since gone on to create four more virtual choirs, each one getting bigger and bigger. The vision that started with the thought of just 50 singers morphed into thousands of people, sharing the stage to showcase their amazing voices as one.
Hopefully, the vision will continue on, so we can get more brilliant virtual choirs in the future. With thousands of singers already, the editing part is probably becoming very difficult. To see the outstanding virtual choir for yourself, watch the video below!
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