Grammy Award-winner and UNLV graduate, Eric Whitacre, is featured in a free lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, in the Dr. Arturo Rando-Grillot Recital Hall of the Beam Music Center.
The lecture, "Questions, Answers, and Conversation," is free, but requires a ticket due to very limited seating. Each patron may pick up 2 tickets at the Performing Arts Center Box Office. The first 100 seats are reserved for UNLV students and faculty and have been released today. Remaining seats will be released Saturday, February 1.
Whitacre is one of the most popular and performed composers of our time, a distinguished conductor, broadcaster, and public speaker. His first album as both composer and conductor on Decca/Universal, Light & Gold, won a Grammy in 2012, reaped unanimous five star reviews, and became the no. 1 classical album in the U.S. and United Kingdom charts within a week of release.
His second album, Water Night, was released on Decca in April 2012 and debuted at no. 1 in the iTunes and Billboard classical chart on the day of release. His compositions also feature on multiple other recordings made in Europe, North America and Australia.
His ground breaking Virtual Choir, Lux Aurumque received over 1 million views on YouTube in just 2 months (now 4 million). The latest, Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise, released in July 2013, received over 8,400 submissions from 101 countries and launched at the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace/BBC 1.
Eric has written for The Tallis Scholars, BBC Proms, London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Chanticleer, Julian Lloyd Webber and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Berlin Rundfunkchor and The King's Singers among others. An exceptional orator, Eric was honored to address the U.N. Leaders program and the revered TED conference in Long Beach, CA. Eric addressed the World Economic Forum, Davos in January 2013, leading a discussion on the role of arts in society and the impact of technology on the arts, and will return to Davos by invitation in 2014. In March 2013, he presented the first 'live' Virtual Choir at TED (Long Beach, CA) performing 'Cloudburst'.
Many of Eric Whitacre's works have entered the standard choral and symphonic repertories and have become the subject of scholarly works and doctoral dissertations. The first piece he ever performed - Mozart's Requiem - changed his life. Inspired to compose, his first composition "Go, Lovely Rose," was completed at the age of 21.
He graduated from UNLV in 1995 with a Bachelor of Music. He went on to the Juilliard School (New York), earning his Master of Music degree and studying with Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning composer, John Corigliano.
Whitacre is currently Composer-in-Residence at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, UK.
