You know you've made it when...

...you are a modern composer of choral music and you are mentioned on ESPN.com's 'Tuesday Morning Quarterback' football blog. This was the good fortune of the rapidly rising West Coast composer Eric Whitacre. Perhaps what is even more astounding is the fact that a CD by British vocal group Polyphony of Whitacre's choral works ranked #75 on Amazon.com's sales rankings and is currently sold-out. This makes it the current highest selling classical CD on Amazon's charts. What impresses me the most is that this isn't a CD of crossover, or a "Classics for Relaxation" type of compilation, or a release by a particularly famous performer or a recording of Beethoven symphonies. This is a release of music written in the last fifteen years by a young composer, performed by a renowned choral ensemble who most people outside of the classical music world (or even the choral music world for that matter) probably haven't heard of. Of course, Polyphony wasn't the first group to record this music, and the BYU Singers made a stellar recording of the same material in 2003. Whitacre's music elegantly balances emotional accessibility and American optimism with an astounding harmonic language and a vivid imagination (check out 'Cloudburst' or 'Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine'). His 'Sleep' has to be up there in my top-ten list of choral works I've yet to perform (That list might make an interesting post sometime later on...). Whitacre is also taking advantage of the latest trend for classical marketing, Myspace.com. This is good news. Along with all of the Met Opera stuff grabbing the headlines there is cause for optimism.