Cali Immersive Residency Resonates with Composer Eric Whitacre at Montclair State University

The Cali Immersive Residency Program at Montclair State University rose to a crescendo with Grammy-winning composer, conductor and speaker Eric Whitacre leading a deeply embedded program of lectures, interviews on his music, master classes with students, workshops and performances of his music with John J. Cali School of Music ensembles and 500 high school choristers.

Whitacre is widely known for his exceptional choral works and innovative use of technology. His lush and emotional music was the centerpiece of the three-day residency, including master classes and workshops, interviews for a School of Communication and Media mini-documentary, rehearsals with choral and instrumental ensembles, and a high school choral workshop and concert. “This residency had so many tentacles – it was a bold program with myriad moving parts – and it totally worked,” says Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Heather J. Buchanan. “It was a dream come true.”

The spring residency was organized to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement, Buchanan says. It actively involved various departments across the University, such as Communications, Business, English and the Honors Program. As a highlight of the program, a public event titled “Cali Conversations” was jointly hosted by Buchanan and Anthony Mazzocchi, director of the Cali School.

“Working with Eric Whitacre was nothing short of extraordinary. He carries himself with such kindness, curiosity and humility,” says Christine Tanko ’24, a Music Education major. “I believe that he brought new life into the Cali community that will last a very long time.”

Whitacre’s 30-year career includes 70 works: 58 for choirs, 17 for orchestra, 13 for band, three for solo voice and one musical theater work. In addition to original compositions, he has produced 16 recordings beginning with his 2010 debut CD Light and Gold that won the 2012 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Several movements from his recent long-form work The Sacred Veil were a focus of this residency, as well as exploration of repertoire spanning his career.

A choral workshop brought 500 high school choristers from 18 New Jersey and New York schools to campus for a workshop and choral concert featuring Montclair’s Vocal Accord, Chorale and University Singers. Proceeds from the sold-out concert went toward Pathways to Music scholarships for deserving students through the Invest in Cali Fund. Four seats in Leshowitz Recital Hall were dedicated to Whitacre during the residency.

“Eric is humble and brilliant. He was generous with his time and absolutely magnificent in the way he engaged with our students,” Buchanan says. “To summarize this residency in a word: it was transformational.”

Whitacre worked on repertoire from his extensive catalog with all the Cali School choirs – Vocal Accord (chamber choir), Chorale (140-voice symphonic choir) and University Singers (elective choir), plus the Rose Quartet, Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony, as well student composers and Music Education majors. Two student composers, Ian Kearney, a junior majoring in Music Composition, and Dayla Spencer, a freshman Music major, were featured in the composer’s forum “Finding Your Voice.”

“Working with Eric Whitacre was such a valuable experience,” Kearney said. “It was amazing to be able to hear his insight as to what it means to be a professional composer. As someone who writes choral music myself, getting to work with him personally in the composition master class and in the choirs was so inspiring.”

Whitacre is among today’s most popular musicians. His works are programmed worldwide and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united 100,000 singers from all over the world through the use of technology. At a Cali Midweek program on “Creativity, Connection and the Virtual Choir,” Whitacre described the continuing evolution of this art form that assembles into one performance the thousands of videos he receives of singers filming themselves performing his various compositions.

“We started hearing from people, their stories about how they come to choir and how much it meant to them, how they genuinely felt part of something larger than themselves by being a part of this, which we found extraordinary because very few of these people had ever met in person and will never meet in person,” Whitacre said.

“Almost overnight, our little experiment had become this global choir, this Earth choir and still singers were saying, when is the next one?” he said.

Adds Kearney, the student composer, “Whitacre’s music reaches so many people, and working with him made me feel like music can make anything possible.”

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