Eric Whitacre
Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today’s most popular musicians. His works are programmed worldwide and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united singers from more than 145 countries. Born in Nevada in 1970, Eric is a graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music (New York). He completed his second and final term as Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale in 2020 following five years as Composer in Residence at the University of Cambridge (UK).
His compositions have been widely recorded and his debut album as a conductor on Universal, Light, and Gold, went straight to the top of the charts, earning him a Grammy. As a guest conductor, he has drawn capacity audiences to concerts with many of the world’s leading orchestras and choirs in venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), the Royal Albert Hall, and Buckingham Palace (London). Insatiably curious and a lover of all types of music, Eric has worked with legendary Hollywood composers Hans Zimmer, John Powell, and Jeff Beal as well as British pop icons Laura Mvula, Imogen Heap, and Annie Lennox. Major classical commissions have been written for the BBC Proms, Minnesota Orchestra, Rundfunkchor Berlin, The Tallis Scholars, Chanticleer, Cincinnati Pops, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Children’s Chorus of America, and The King’s Singers.
In 2018 his composition for symphony orchestra and chorus, Deep Field, became the foundation for a collaboration with NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute, Music Productions, and 59 Productions. The film was premiered at Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral, Florida), has been seen at arts and science festivals across the world. Deep Field has been performed in concert on several continents, and with simultaneous film projection by the New World Symphony, New World Center (Miami), Brussels Philharmonic, Flagey (Brussels), Bergen Philharmonic, Grieghallen (Bergen) among other great orchestras. His long-form work for choir, cello, and piano, The Sacred Veil, is a profound meditation on love, life, and loss. It was premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale in Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2019, conducted by the composer, and will be released on Signum Records in 2020.
Widely considered to be the pioneer of Virtual Choirs, Eric created his first project as an experiment in social media and digital technology. Virtual Choir 1: Lux Aurumque was published in 2010 and featured 185 singers from 12 countries. Ten years-on in 2020, Virtual Choir 6: Sing Gently – written for the Virtual Choir during the global pandemic that shook the world, COVID-19 – featured 17,562 singers from 129 countries. Previous Virtual Choir projects include ‘Glow’ written for the Winter Dreams holiday show at Disneyland© Adventure Park, California, and the Virtual Youth Choir, a major fundraiser for UNICEF. To date, the Virtual Choirs have registered over 60 million views and have been seen on global TV.
A charismatic speaker, Eric Whitacre has given keynote addresses for many Fortune 500 companies, in education and global institutions from Apple and Google to the World Economic Forum in Davos and the United Nations Speaker’s Program. His mainstage talks at the influential TED conference in Long Beach CA received standing ovations. His collaboration with Spitfire Audio resulted in a trail-blazing vocal sample library, became an instant best-seller, and is used by composers the world over.
3 words to describe Nature?
Breathe. Connected. Right.
3 things Nature taught you?
Patience
Focus
Inevitability
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The high desert in Northern Nevada
Regent’s Park, London
Big Sur, California
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Open and alive
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Ancient, quiet
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Elemental
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
How small I truly am, and how vast is our universe
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Young
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Lonely
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Yes! I think I have all four of those places deep in my heart.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
When I was young I lived in the desert. Northern Nevada, high in the Sierras, my childhood filled with endless sky. I would spend my days outside, the natural world vibrating all around me, mystical, magical. I believed I could speak to falcons. I believed I could shape the wind. And I believed the veil between the real world and the dream world was just an illusion, that if I quieted myself enough I could slip freely between the two worlds. I think I still believe that.
Bruce Langereis
Bruce is the President of Delta Land Development, which seeks to redefine and transform the building and construction industry by putting wellness and environmental stewardship at the center of all its projects. Striving to find new ways of building net-positive developments, Bruce and his team move forward following a strict set of goals that include: promoting biodiversity, reducing the need for cars, reducing waste, storing carbon, capturing rain, producing energy, and contributing positively to the livability, health, and welfare of the inhabitants. Their recent project, SoLo, a zero-emissions, mass timber, net carbon negative, entirely off the grid and self-sustainable house in the Soo Valley near Whistler, designed by Perkins and Will, models the future of environmental building and sets the stage for Delta’s Bellevue and 22nd project in West Vancouver and Canada’s Earth Tower development in Vancouver. SoLo was recently featured in many architectural magazines, including Azure, Dwell, and many others.
Bruce grew up in East Vancouver. He started as a heavy-duty mechanic then shifted to being a commercial realtor. Almost 35 years ago he joined Macauley Nicolls Maitland (now Colliers International) which led him to successfully selling the historic Georgia Hotel in 1988 for a record 38M. Delta Land Development recently completed the 450M redevelopment of the Rosewood Georgia Hotel.
Bruce is a floatplane and commercial helicopter pilot, martial artist, avid rock climber, golfer, fisherman, and bow hunter. He once spent a full month in total wilderness isolation and heads out to nature every chance he can.
3 words to describe Nature?
Rhythmic. Engaging. Soulful
3 things Nature taught you?
Fear
Respect
Rhythm
3 most treasured Nature spots?
The next 3 places I visit!!!! I love it all
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Makes me feel Like exploring it
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Peaceful, tranquil, small
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Respectful of the power of Nature
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Reflective of life
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Glad I’m not flying my floatplane
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Like Facing into it and feeling refreshed
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
I love them all
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
To my well being and that of Humanity – Priceless and Essential
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
Where do I begin - Exploring creeks and ditches catching frogs and other aquatic creatures.
Pauline Brown
Pauline Brown is a longtime leader in luxury goods and former Chairman of LVMH North America, renowned for acquiring, building, and leading some of the world’s most influential brands.
In her groundbreaking new book, Aesthetic Intelligence, she shows businesspeople how to harness the power of their own senses to create products and services that delight their customers and build businesses that last. Her book is based on a course that she designed and taught at Harvard Business School.
Pauline began her career as a Consultant at Bain and subsequently held senior executive roles at Estee Lauder, Avon and The Carlyle Group.
She currently is an Executive-in-Residence at Columbia Business School, a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and the host of two radio shows on SiriusXM, “Trendsetters” & Tastemakers”.
3 words to describe Nature?
Invincible. Boundless. Magnificent
3 things Nature taught you?
To trust my instincts (they're far more prescient than my thoughts)
To embrace the untamed aesthetic (it's far more vibrant than anything man-made
To accept mortality (it's not the end of a life cycle, but the beginning of a new one)
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Table Mountain, Cape Town
Maroon Lake, Aspen
The Geysers of Iceland
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?
Transported
When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?
Enveloped
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?
Roused
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?
Wonderstruck
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?
Vivified
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?
Restive
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Ocean
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
9
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island. I still can smell the air, taste the fishy water, and feel the sand under my wet swimsuit.