Eric Whitacre

“I don't feel like I'm an artist with a capital 'A.'”

“People in chorus tends to be much more emotional or at least wear their hearts on their sleeve. They are generally the kind to hold hands and cry. It's just a different personality type.”

“I wanted to be a rock star. I dreamed of it, and that's all I dreamed of. To be more accurate, I wanted to be a pop star. This was in the late '80s. And mostly, I wanted to be the fifth member of Depeche Mode or Duran Duran.”

“Many composers use software to write music - programs like Finale or Sibelius. There are also recording programs. I should say I'm still very old-fashioned, I still use pencil and paper. But almost every composer I know does it the 'new way.'”

“As a composer, I know that all sorts of sounds I hear are making their way into my brain and soul and later sneak into my music.”

“For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn't know what I was doing.”

“For me, the virtual choir has taught me that, if anything, the Internet builds these post-national tribes, people finding each other anyway they can.”

“A really good poem is full of music.”

“With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the text, but the text - when I'm doing it right - acts as the perfect 'blueprint', and all the architecture is there. The poet has done the heavy lifting, so my job is to find the soul of the poem and then somehow translate that into music.”

“When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart 'Requiem.' That was the piece that changed my life overnight.”

“In Las Vegas, the magnitude is impressive, but the humanity is gone. It feels like you're being intimidated out of your money instead of inviting you to come have this experience.”

“I write music that sounds complex but isn't. I frankly never think in terms of theory.”

“I don't know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.”

“I happen to be one of the people who believe that the Internet is a force of good, and I'm very optimistic about it.”

“Since I first fell in love with choral music when I was 18 and began composing at 21, I've been listening to these recordings of British choirs. I just fell in love with that sound - that pure, clean, pristine sound - and I think it's probably been the biggest influence on my sound.”

“I truly thought I was going to be in pop music. And then I joined a choir to meet girls, and everything changed in the first rehearsal.”

“I'm not an atheist, but I'm not a Christian, either.”

“To have a live choir there on the stage and then these singers from different countries signing with us in real time through Skype, it's as if there aren't borders anymore.”

“When I had my first experiences of choral singing, the dissonance of those close harmonies was so exquisite that I would giggle or I would tear up, and I felt it in a physical way.”

“There must be four or five hundred choirs here in London alone. In a way, there's nowhere else on Earth I could go and get this level and passion for singing in the one place.”