Wake Up With a Virtual Choir of 17,500 People

Yeah, I know. Barstool is not exactly your go-to site for choir music with haunting arrangements and transcendent, angelic voices. But you have to concede, this is pretty frickin amazing. This composer/conductor Eric Whitacre first started putting together these virtual choirs over 10 years ago, long before anybody had heard of Covid-19 or Zoom or movie casts reuniting from their homes. His first one had 185 people. A few years later it was north of 2,000 and then 3,800. This one, that landed yesterday, has 17,572 singers from 129 countries. And he and his staff had to go through every, single entry to make sure there were no glitches or, let's be honest, guys showing their wangs. Then sync them all up and then animate the videos into this collage. It's an incredible accomplishment. I haven't sung in a choir since 2nd grade, when Mrs. Bresnahan chose my golden throat to be in our school's boys chorus. But the Irish Rose (who's actually very much a soloist who's sung the Anthem for the Patriots, Red Sox and Notre Dame) says there's nothing like letting out that first note and hearing it combine with all these other voices. These 17,572 had to pull this off sitting in front of their phones, all by themselves. And the result is astonishing. You wouldn't know it all the time, but he internet is still capable of doing remarkable things that bring out the best in us.