Eric Whitacre

I wouldn't say that I'm actually trying to cause chills in the audience, but certainly my goal is to, at the very least, effect a physiological response - at the most, to effect some sort of state change, ideally, in the audience.

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.

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'm a self-confessed geek, and my whole concept of music at first was entirely electronic. In many ways, it turned out to be an advantage. I was so green, so utterly naive about the nature of classical music, that I did things that made me look totally, deliberately unorthodox.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.

A really good poem is full of music.

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

I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.

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.

I'm not a culture snob. So while, of course, I think the Mozart 'Requiem' or, say, Beethoven's 'Ninth' are some of the greatest works of art in the history of humankind, that's not to say the Beatles or Queen or Simon and Garfunkel aren't brilliant, beautiful, important works of art that should be sung without a sense of irony.

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.

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.

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.