About the Creators

PHOTO: MARC ROYCE

ERIC 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 more than 145 countries.

Born in Nevada in 1970, he dreamed of being a rock star. But it was his first choir rehearsal, at university, that changed his life. He famously said: ‘…suddenly everything was in shocking Technicolor. It was the most transformative experience I’ve ever had – in that single moment, hearing dissonance and harmony, and people singing…’ He went on to study composition, earning a master’s degree from the Juilliard School of Music.

His compositions have been widely recorded and his debut album, Light and Gold, topped the charts, earning him a Grammy Award in 2012. More recently, his composition for symphony orchestra and chorus, Deep Field, inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope, became the foundation for a film collaboration led by NASA. The Sacred Veil was premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and a new version with full string orchestra will be premiered in October. Earlier this year, the Cincinnati Pops gave the premiere of a new work, Prelude in C, co-commissioned with the National Symphony Orchestra.

He is Visiting Composer at Pembroke College at Cambridge University and recently completed his second term as Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. CHARLES ANTHONY SILVESTRI specialises in writing bespoke texts for choral composers, with a particular emphasis on texts in Latin, both sacred and secular. He enjoys the creative challenges and rewards of the collaborative process, and has worked with composers such as Eric Whitacre, Ola Gjeilo, Kim Arnesen and Dan Forrest, as well as for organisations such as Houston Grand Opera, the King’s Singers, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, and Westminster Abbey.

As a clinician, he speaks to choirs, classes and concert audiences about his works, the creative process and the marriage of words and music, as well as his collaborative relationships with composers, and has given presentations at the Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Disney Hall, and universities and schools throughout the US.

He is the author of three books, including A Silver Thread, a retrospective of his lyric poetry, and his poems for Eric Whitacre’s Sleep and Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine have been published as children’s books.

He teaches Ancient and Mediæval History at Washburn University, Kansas. He is also an artist, specialising in replicating mediæval manuscript illuminations and recreating the techniques and materials of Gothic and Renaissance painters and iconographers.

SAINTE-CHAPELLE

Sainte-Chapelle was commissioned by Peter Phillips, director of The Tallis Scholars, for the ensemble’s 40th anniversary in 2013. At around the time of the invitation, Eric Whitacre visited Paris where he was captivated in particular by the sheer beauty of Sainte-Chapelle, the ‘holy chapel’ built by Louis IX of France to hold the royal collection of religious relics, including Christ’s Crown of Thorns.

The Gothic chapel survives as a mesmerising example of 13th-century stained glass – the vast windows reach to the vaulted ceiling, leading ‘relentlessly’, as Whitacre describes it, to an intricate rose window depicting the apocalypse of St John.

Once again, he turned to Silvestri, who crafted a text that tells the story of an innocent young girl, hearing angels in the stained glass gently singing the Sanctus text: ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ The music begins with the men’s voices singing music in a style evoking Gregorian chant; the women enter with the first ‘whispered’ Sanctus.

THE SACRED VEIL

In 2016, after a visit from his closest friend and longtime collaborator – lyricist, poet and historian Charles Anthony Silvestri (Tony) – composer Eric Whitacre found a poem that Tony had left for him sitting on his piano. Tony had lost his wife to cancer 12 years previously, losing his soulmate and leaving him to bring up their two young children. He hadn’t felt able to talk about her loss but, encouraged by Eric, he started to share his experience through poetry.

The Sacred Veil is a 12-movement work –dedicated to Tony’s late wife Julia Lawrence Silvestri (Julie) – which includes texts written by Silvestri, Whitacre and Julie herself, capturing the human experience through a story of love and loss.

‘Whenever there is birth or death’ are the first words of the poem that Silvestri brought to Whitacre, which the composer read over and over before immediately sitting at the piano and writing music. Eric decided to centre this entire work on Silvestri’s idea of a ‘veil’ that separates the world of the living and those who have passed. This first poem, The Veil Opens, became the first movement of the larger work. Whitacre states: ‘I knew that I would repeat texts and phrases three times every time I wanted to meditate on an idea, to “formalise” the poetry and to create a sense of stasis in the music. I decided early on that the “veil” would be represented by middle C (the third letter of the alphabet), and that moments

The rose window of Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

There’s excitement in the air as we reconnect with each other, our audiences, our fellow choristers and instrumentalists. With the recent improvements to the Concert Hall, we can look forward to a new era of making and enjoying music in this amazing space. Our aim is to replace the lost income of the past two years by presenting live concerts. But box office income alone is not enough to sustain our company. We need your help to drive our efforts further. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Your gift will help to sustain our company as we look to a bright music-filled future.

Scan the QR code, visit sydneyphilharmonia.com.au/donate or call (02) 8274 6200 to make your donation today.