Grammy award-winning and pioneering composer Eric Whitacre is one of today’s most popular musicians, with his works from his thirty-year composition career being performed worldwide. He has sold 300k units with Decca Classics, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. He’s collaborated with the likes of Hans Zimmer, Imogen Heap and Annie Lennx, and has composed for the world’s greatest orchestras and ensembles. As well as being a widely-respected conductor, his is known as a charismatic speaker, and has given keynote addresses in education and global institutions from Apple and Google to the United Nations Speaker’s Program. His mainstage talks at the influential TED conference in Long Beach CA received standing ovations.
Now he presents his next album, Eternity in an Hour, a 60-minute work inspired by William Blake’s poem, Auguries of Innocence. The album is the first in a renewed partnership with Decca Classics
Eric conducts the work which combines his first love of electronica and synthesisers, with his choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, strings and piano, and was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2024
This album explores the connection between the opening line “To see a world in a grain of sand“ and granular synthesis. Eric even ’grainified’ the poetry, taking slivers of each line for each movement, where only those words are sung
Eternity in an Hour is a culmination of Eric’s life as a musician. Identifying as a long time ’synth nerd’, Eric uses the raw, mystical sound of the Lyra-8 synthesiser, alongside a Tasacm 424 tape recorder, whilst playing all the piano parts on his grandmother’s 125-year-old piano, the sound of his childhood.
