Passaic Today

The Cali Immersive Residency Program at Montclair State University culminated in a series of lectures, interviews, master classes, workshops and performances led by Grammy-winning composer, conductor and speaker Eric Whitacre. Whitacre collaborated with the John J. Cali School of Music ensembles and 500 high school choristers during the residency.

Whitacre is renowned for his exceptional choral works and innovative use of technology. His music was central to the three-day residency which included master classes, workshops, interviews for a School of Communication and Media mini-documentary, rehearsals with choral and instrumental ensembles, as well as a high school choral workshop and concert.

“This residency had so many tentacles – it was a bold program with myriad moving parts – and it totally worked,” said Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Heather J. Buchanan. “It was a dream come true.”

The spring residency aimed to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement. It involved various departments across the University such as Communications, Business, English and the Honors Program. A public event titled “Cali Conversations” was jointly hosted by Buchanan and Anthony Mazzocchi, director of the Cali School.

“Working with Eric Whitacre was nothing short of extraordinary. He carries himself with such kindness, curiosity and humility,” said Christine Tanko ’24, a Music Education major. “I believe that he brought new life into the Cali community that will last a very long time.”

Whitacre’s career spans 30 years during which he has produced 70 works including compositions for choirs, orchestra, band, solo voice and musical theater work. His debut CD Light and Gold won the 2012 Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Several movements from his recent long-form work The Sacred Veil were explored during this residency along with repertoire spanning his career.

A choral workshop brought 500 high school choristers from 18 New Jersey and New York schools to campus for a workshop and choral concert featuring Montclair’s Vocal Accord, Chorale and University Singers. Proceeds from the sold-out concert went toward Pathways to Music scholarships for deserving students through the Invest in Cali Fund. Four seats in Leshowitz Recital Hall were dedicated to Whitacre during the residency.

“Eric is humble and brilliant. He was generous with his time and absolutely magnificent in the way he engaged with our students,” Buchanan said. “To summarize this residency in a word: it was transformational.”

Whitacre worked on repertoire from his extensive catalog with all the Cali School choirs – Vocal Accord (chamber choir), Chorale (140-voice symphonic choir) and University Singers (elective choir), plus the Rose Quartet, Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony, as well student composers and Music Education majors. Two student composers, Ian Kearney, a junior majoring in Music Composition, and Dayla Spencer, a freshman Music major, were featured in the composer’s forum “Finding Your Voice.”

“Working with Eric Whitacre was such a valuable experience,” Kearney said. “It was amazing to be able to hear his insight as to what it means to be a professional composer. As someone who writes choral music myself, getting to work with him personally in the composition master class and in the choirs was so inspiring.”

Whitacre's ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united 100,000 singers worldwide through technology. At a Cali Midweek program on “Creativity, Connection and the Virtual Choir,” Whitacre discussed the continuing evolution of this art form that compiles thousands of videos of singers performing his compositions into one performance.

“We started hearing from people, their stories about how they come to choir and how much it meant to them...which we found extraordinary because very few of these people had ever met in person and will never meet in person,” Whitacre said.

“Almost overnight, our little experiment had become this global choir, this Earth choir and still singers were saying, when is the next one?” he added.

Adds Kearney, the student composer, “Whitacre’s music reaches so many people, and working with him made me feel like music can make anything possible.”