One Voice Bundled With Other Lone Voices: Modernly Beautiful or Beautifully Modern?

With a divisive election behind us and the holiday season in front of us, it’s important to take a breather and remind ourselves that, as humans, we really are all in this together.  Everyone knows there are some scary, bad things lurking in cyberland.  This is one of the good, uplifting things the Internet has to offer and I felt compelled to share it here.

Listening to Eric Whitacre describe the project on the radio, it sounded interesting.  He is a composer and conducter who wrote the music and offered it to people to perform at home, so they could send him their videos.  There were 185 voices from 23 countries.

Photo source: good-report.com

 

Scott Haines synched all the individual voices and videos into one masterfully produced performance with Eric “conducting” the videos assembled as if on a stage of live performers.  When they played the audio, it surpassed all my expectations.

 

 

All of these people from all over the world, singing the piece alone at their homes, voluntarily joined others doinig the same thing.  In this age of social media so often replacing face-to-face social interaction, it’s easy to feel disconnected and isolated.  There’s something about this project that helps transcend that.

Not surprisingly, it’s gotten traction.  Virtual Choir 2.0 had 2,051 contributors from 58 countries.

If you find yourself alone this holiday season, watch this video and remember these people were alone and found a way to make their voices count.  It will be interesting to see how this type of performing grows in the years to come.

“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

You can watch the interview with Scott Haines about the project.