Composer, conductor, Buddhist and model: Inside the restless mind of Eric Whitacre

Grammy-winning composer Eric Whitacre took a deep breath and pitched his germ of a musical idea to the head of London’s BBC Proms.

“It would be Vangelis meets Thomas Tallis,″⁣ he says.

To his surprise, his proposed marriage of electronica and 16th-century vocal music got the thumbs up. Eternity in an Hour debuted at the Royal Albert Hall last year and is poised to make its Australian premiere with Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.

Whitacre is a musical rarity: a popular, highly regarded composer, conductor and performer who straddles the divide between classical and contemporary music.

Eric Whitacre straddles the divide between classical and contemporary music.Credit: Janie Barrett

He has an aura of rock star glamour as crosses his Sydney hotel foyer in black jeans and sweater. With collar-length hair and chiselled good looks – he could be Sting’s much younger brother – he looks more the techno band member he once was than a conductor at home on podiums around the globe.

It’s the third time he has worked with the Philharmonia’s young adult ensemble VOX, who co-commissioned the piece with the Proms and Flemish Radio Choir. Whitacre will perform a range of electronics while conducting the work also scored for choir, piano and cello.

Its title is based on a stanza from William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Whitacre first read the poem in his early 20s and admires its eloquent meditation on impermanence and the interconnectedness of all things.

“I was thunderstruck by the immediacy and the truth in it,” he says.

The stanza’s Zen-like simplicity also appealed to him. He is a long-standing Zen practitioner who found an unlikely route into this form of Buddhism as a teenager growing up before the internet.

Eric Whitacre conducting the world premiere of Eternity in an Hour at the BBC Proms 2024.Credit: Chris Christodoulo

“My grandmother had the Encyclopedia Britannica and I would be bored out of my mind at her house and so I would read it,” he says. “I remember one day thinking, ‘what’s under Z’?”

He flipped to the back – and discovered Zen. “I had tears in my eyes thinking this is true, this is so beautiful,” he says.

Soon after, he found a copy of Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and it has been with him ever since.

Becoming a beginner again – maintaining a beginner’s mind – is vital to him as an artist. It’s the reason he pushes himself outside his comfort zone, which in Eternity has entailed not only conducting and performing simultaneously for the first time, but learning a range of new electronic instruments.

“I have a relentless desire for growth or expansion. I used to think it was ambition, but I don’t think that now. It’s something else,” he says. “The poetic way I like to think of it is as a chrysalis. Something in me needs to transform.”

The innate curiosity that led him to the back of gran’s encyclopedia is evident as we sit over coffee. He is lively and inquiring. His answers are considered and expansive. His attention is on talking rather than his coffee, which remains untouched.

Whitacre, 55, grew up in a small town in Nevada, played synthesiser in techno-pop bands and dreamed of becoming a rock star. At college, he overcame his conviction that only nerds sang in choirs and, encouraged by a teacher, joined one.

“At the first rehearsal, we started by singing the kyrie from Mozart’s Requiem,” he says. “It was like this euphoric drug injected directly into my heart.”

He went on to the Juilliard School in New York and his work since has spanned everything from big-budget films to classical ensembles, orchestras and soloists.

‘Performing piano in front of an audience would be debilitating.’

Eric Whitacre

Whitacre has a strong social media presence, including more than 300,000 Facebook followers. He’s a popular and eloquent communicator who has presented a TED talk and spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He’s also been on the books of a top modelling agency.

He typically talks to his audience before concerts, which he enjoys, but as a musician he has suffered from such crippling stage fright that even now he cannot play facing towards an audience.

“Performing piano in front of an audience would be debilitating,” he says. “I’ve created a career where I can have my back to the audience and just make music.”

What has helped him overcome performance anxiety is to see himself as a bridge or boat between the audience and the music. He sees his role as to serve those who need to hear the music.

“In having a job to do – to keep the boat from sinking – then there’s no room for you in that,” he says.

Eternity in an Hour is at the Sydney Opera House on June 27