Journey at Home Day 30
Remember back in the day when "i" prefaced everything? I worked in a company with an iCEO that created an iBook and an iPad and an iPhone. The "i" started to appear in front of everything to signal that yes, "I" am connected to the Internet!
Now it is "v" except that haven't yet started abbreviating "virtual." We have vWine Tastings, vMeetings, and vCelebrations. And we have an ensemble of vEnsembles--orchestras, opera, choruses. I hope that when the shelter-in-place ends that the ensembles continue.
My sister-in-law shared this Palestrina piece The Strife is O-er that combines 800 submissions and 600 participants. The singers and instrumentalists are quite good and so is the engineering. If you go to the site, you can download a part and sing or play along.
Although the pandemic is causing, out of necessity, an abundance of virtual ensembles, Eric Whitacre started a virtual choir in 2009. When I first saw his work, I was quite impressed. Putting together hundreds of singers is a feat today, but even more so back then. And his virtual choir has grown from a little over 100 singers to more than 8,000. In 2013 he did a real-time virtual choir as part of a Ted Talk.
His most recent project is Deep Field, which combines Hubble Deep Field images with a soundtrack he composed. The 8,000 choir members represented 120 countries and ages from 4 to 87. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs.
Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise features thousands of singers. The video is a high-rise cityscape. Each window contains a video of one of the choir members. Truly amazing. Everyone is listed in the credits, so the credits take quite a bit of time! Those of you who are getting vChoir experience can get on Eric's mailing list. That lets you found out about his next project and you might be able to participate.