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The Virtual Choir Project
An anonymous reader writes "Conductor and composer Eric Whitacre has successfully created a virtual choir using the voices of 185 people who posted their performance on YouTube. The piece that's performed is called 'Sleep,' composed by the conductor himself in 2000. Anyone can join in — all you need is a webcam and a microphone."
The piece in the video is called Lux Aurumque, not Sleep. I've actually performed a wind ensemble version of this piece -- it's extremely difficult due to the very delicate and exposed parts, but Whitacre's music is just gorgeous.
"Before criticizing someone, first walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away... and you'll have his shoes."
Yes, it's really, really cool. I'm a choir director, and we performed this piece a year or two ago. It's incredibly ambitious to even think of doing something like this across social media - it's not an easy piece to conduct, so it wouldn't be easy to keep the singers synced with each other. You can hear a bit of that any time there's an ending consonant (e.g. on "lux" throughout the piece). Nevertheless, he's created some amazing art with this already great composition.
And, to echo someone else's sentiments below - the piece is "Lux Aurumque", not "Sleep".