There’s nothing quite like the beauty of choral voices singing in harmony. You could be into punk, minimalist techno, chillwave, folk, or whatever the genre du jour is these days, but still, the structured ensemble sound of a choir will entrance even the most elitist of music snobs. And in theory, if 16 people singing makes a stirring impact, then a 100-odd person group would pack an even bigger aural punch. The more the merrier, right? How about a choir of some 2,000 singers? That should certainly be enough to make an impression.Well, that’s exactly what conductor Eric Whitacre ended up with when he sent a call out to choirs and schools across the world asking them to sing in a virtual performance of his composition "Lux Aurumque (Light and Gold)", which you can check out above. He received hundreds of responses and ended up with a choir that was 185-persons strong, but not content with this, he wanted his virtual crowdsourced choir to be bigger still. So he went 2.0 and put a second call out that resulted in an overwhelming response which yielded 2,052 submissions from 58 countries.This second project, called “Sleep” will be released in April, but Eric Whitacre recently gave a sneak preview of it to an elite crowd of influencers at TED 2011. You can find out more details about it, along with statistical breakdowns of which countries participated and how many sopranos, altos, tenors, and bass parts were submitted, while also watching real-time submissions from across the globe on his “Earth View” over at his blog.
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