One night in 1999, Ethan Sperry heard five minutes of music that changed his life.  At choral music’s biggest annual event, the American Choral Directors Association conference, the 28-year-old choral director was transfixed by Minnesota’s famed St. Olaf Choir and its performance of Eric Whitacre’s “Water Night,” a setting of a poem by Nobel Prize winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz. 

“It changed my life and the life of all the thousands of choir directors at that conference,” recalled Sperry, who has directed Portland State University’s choral programs for the past decade. “ We were all talking about it.  Here was a new language in writing for choir, and a new way of setting poetry.  It was the first time I’d been moved so much by music written by someone my own age.” 

Since that watershed moment two decades ago, Whitaker has become one of the world’s most popular and most performed composers — of any kind.  More, he’s become choral music’s first rock star, his long blond tresses (he’s signed with a major London modeling agency) gracing TED Talks and YouTube videos, young fans lining up to hear his many talks and presentations around the world.  At age 50, he has his own record label, his own eponymous professional chorus, prestigious awards (including a Grammy), and collaborations with everyone from the London Symphony Orchestra to America’s most famous choir, Chanticleer, to film composer Hans Zimmer to pop star Annie Lennox.  He is composer in residence with one of America’s finest vocal ensembles, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and he’s even joined the stars at NASA, with his Deep Field project combining music with astral images from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

On March 1, Sperry brings Whitacre to Portland State’s new Viking Pavilion for a massive concert of his music.  The composer will conduct PSU's Chamber Choir, women’s Rose Choir and men’s Thorn Choir, and Wind Symphony in some of his new works.  In the second half, Whitacre will conduct a 500-voice choir comprising the combined PSU Choirs along with 350 high school singers from the best high school choir programs in the greater Portland metro area, plus the wind symphony.  The culmination of a three-day Whitacre residency with the choristers, the concert is one of the biggest local choral music events in recent memory. 

Whitacre’s belief in choral music ignited while he was a college synth-band pop singer who admired Depeche Mode and joined his university choir in part to meet sopranos.  Though he didn’t read music till he was 18, singing Mozart’s mighty “Requiem” so moved him that he shortly began composing his own choral works.  That led to a master’s degree at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School and, two years after graduating, to that transformative American Choral Directors Association concert. 

Praising the “joy and innocence and naïveté” of Whitacre’s music, as well as the composer’s ability to match music to words on a micro-level, Sperry said, “In some of his texts, he literally sets every word perfectly.”  Whitacre’s style has become influential in younger generations of choral composers who’ve followed.  Yet his music’s popularity is surprising at first blush because it generally lacks hooky tunes. “ He writes chord progressions that stick with you like a melody does,” Sperry explained, “but you can’t go home and hum them.”  Many radiate a soothing warmth that draws many listeners, including non-“classical” fans. “ You can just luxuriate in the chords,” Sperry said. 

He admires Whitacre’s efforts to expand choral music’s reach. “ He really believes in the art form and champions it in programs like his Virtual Choir project,” in which thousands of singers from dozens of nations upload to YouTube videos of themselves singing the parts to Whitacre’s music, with the composer arranging and conducting the final result. 

Whitacre’s enthusiasm for choral music fuels his advocacy. “ In a modern world where there are very few opportunities for a genuine ecstatic experience, which is what you have when people sing together, [choral singing] gives people a spiritual uplift that they don’t get in so many parts of their lives,” he said. “ When you come together with massed voices, it seems to connect with our minds and spirit.  When you’re listening to people singing, there’s a sense of this deep, deep visceral connection.” 

On March 1, PSU Chamber Choir will also sing a few of their favorites, including a piece from their new CD featuring music by Eriks Esenvalds.  Scheduled for release March 12 on the Naxos label, it’s a follow up to the choir’s award-winning 2017 recording of works by the renowned young Latvian composer. 

Sperry sounds surprisingly enthusiastic about singing in a basketball arena, which the chamber choir tested out when singing at the inauguration of PSU’s previous president. “ The new Viking Pavilion has the most insane acoustic,” he said. “ It’s like you’re singing in the largest shower that’s ever been created.  We’re not even using any amplification.” 

Eric Whitacre Storms Portland

When: 4-6 p.m. Sunday, March 1

Where: PSU Viking Pavilion, 930 S.W. Hall St.

Tickets: $25 and up, pdx.edu

— Brett Campbell, for The Oregonian/OregonLive

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