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Eric Whitacre Choir

Eric Whitacre Choir is a choir that captures the breathtaking range of our most personal musical instrument, crafted to add depth, beauty, grit, and emotion.

Eric Whitacre Choir artwork

Crafted & conducted by the Grammy award winner

Hard-wired to humanity, nothing gets to the heart of music like the human voice – and our most anticipated release to date is a choir that captures the breathtaking range of our most personal musical instrument. Crafted and conducted by Grammy winner Eric Whitacre and showcasing his elite family of singers, this encyclopaedia of the voice will enrich your compositions.

With these sounds at your fingertips, you will start to think differently about the human voice. Go beyond the choral cliches of sacred, angelic and apocalyptic, using these sounds to add depth, beauty, grit, emotion, or suspense. Recorded in the widescreen resonance of The Hall at AIR Studios, Eric Whitacre Choir shares the acoustic DNA of Spitfire’s orchestral range and is designed to complement and blend seamlessly with each of these libraries — all presented in our easy to use, award-winning dedicated plugin, including an Evo Grid for instant inspiration.

  • Hard drive delivery available at checkout
  • You can buy now and download any time

plugin icon Our dedicated plugin

nks icon Compatible with NKS

choir icon

22 singers

microphone icon

6 mic signals

presets icon

170 techniques / 111 Evolutions

dedicated-plugin icon

Dedicated plugin

Listen to Eric Whitacre Choir

As We Breathe — Homay Schmitz
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Tendrils Of Light — Shruthi Rajasekar
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Silver Locket — Paul Thomson
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Surrender — Snorri Hallgrímsson
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Paradigm Shift ii — Christian Henson
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Chimera — Louis Rugg
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In The Night They Came — Paul Saunderson
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Back Home With Tales — Homay Schmitz
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Middle Of The Earth — Oliver Patrice Weder
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Lead Pipe — Louis Rugg
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Holding Fast — Homay Schmitz
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Trailer Music — Homay Schmitz
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Nostalgia — Oliver Patrice Weder
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Features Albion Neo, OPW and Albion One

Eric Whitacre Choir Walkthrough

Walkthrough

15:18
Composing For Choir

Composing For Choir

28:31
Eric Whitacre Choir In Action

In Action

20:06

Celebrating Eric Whitacre Choir

It's been 5 years since the release of a true Spitfire favourite, and to celebrate, we invite you to rescore our stunning original release trailer using the library* — just download the audio-free version below, and share your creations on your preferred platform/s with hashtag #spitfirechoirrescore

* This is not a competition, just a chance for you to share your creations with the community! Feel free to add other Spitfire libraries and your own sounds into the mix.

The human voice carries terabytes of emotional information. The idea that composers can have these sounds at their fingertips just thrills me.

Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre Composing For Choir

The power of the human voice

When Spitfire founders Paul and Christian approached Eric with the idea of sampling his choir, Eric realised this was the perfect vehicle with which to free composers from preconceptions about the voice, and how it can be used in music. He found himself at home with the microscopic detail of sampling, reflecting his approach to composing, with which he crafts every thread of every sound with acute attention to detail.

Over weeks of recording, Eric conducted his choir for every sound in this Spitfire library, conjuring sounds that range from familiar vocal techniques, including vowels and open vocalisations whose harmonic content transforms with changes in mouth shape, through to more unusual articulations, including shorts and rhythmic passages.

The Eric Whitacre Choir

The choir

Eric Whitacre Choir is one of our biggest libraries, filling 200GB of audio, and now NKS ready. We’ve taken a decade of sampling experience and applied this approach to give composers and producers a choral library that uses voices just like another section of your orchestra. In addition to a full orchestral set of samples, we have also recorded a stunning Evo Grid, with each element sculpted by Eric. With the help of design and user experience-agency ustwo (Monument Valley, DICE), Eric Whitacre Choir is housed in a bespoke, self-contained plug-in (VST2, VST3, AU, AAX), developed primarily for composers, by composers. A composition tool that’s easy to use, intuitive and inspiring.

There are 22 singers in total: six soprano, five alto, five tenor and six bass. In the Choir section you will find a total of 170 techniques, while the Evo Grid packs 111 Evolutions.

Eric Whitacre Choir GUI

Eric Whitacre Choir Evo Grid

The Evo Grid

Where the choir meets Spitfire’s unique Evo Grid technology, a new instrument is born – one that so impressed Eric, he said, “Frankly, I wish I could compose like this in everyday life.” Simple in principle, inspiring in practice, the grid takes samples that change in different ways over time and arranges them across the keyboard. Play a single gesture or chord and it will weave a micro-composition that never stands still. Construct your own evolution, or hit the randomise button to automatically generate a unique instrument from an almost infinite array of possibilities. Always original, and always musical.

“The idea is that you can take up to three or four of these Evolutions and combine them,” says Eric, “or cycle through them as one of them evolves, and suddenly you’re painting music in a totally different way, sculpting sound in real time. You can create minutes of profoundly beautiful music in this way.”

Eric Whitacre conducting the choir

Eric Whitacre - Sleep (Live Performance at Air Studios)

6:38

I write orchestrally for the voice - that's the way I think about it. The palette of colours in just voices is much broader than many people think: from delicate whispers to gritty sounds at the back of the throat, to shimmering clouds of overtones.

Eric Whitacre

Hall of magic

There was only one place we could capture the magic of this aesthetic. For Eric Whitacre Choir, we returned to Spitfire’s spiritual recording home: The Hall at AIR Studios – the scene of countless blockbuster film score recordings, and the majority of the Spitfire catalogue. “It was magical,” says Eric. “It must be my favourite recording room in the world. Something about the atmosphere in there, it’s absolutely perfect for voices. It’s got just the right amount of bloom, and the spiritual uplift of its original intention as a church.”

The choir has been captured via the most sought-after microphones, pristine preamps and legendary tape machines by world-renowned engineer Jake Jackson.

Overhead shot of Eric and the choir

Eric Whitacre Contrast

Transcending the boundaries of choral performance, experience the human voice in a completely new light.

Eric Whitacre Portrait

Eric Whitacre

Listening to Eric’s music, you wouldn’t imagine he grew up in Nevada, surrounded by the dust of the desert. It is a landscape that seems alien to the traditional view of choral music. Yet these open spaces and huge skies have helped create his unique sound. “It somehow found its way into my sense of aesthetic, and even into making the sample library. There’s a lot of the open desert in there. What I love about the west coast of America and the desert is that it is pregnant with possibility, and that found its way into the sound.” After high school, which was spent writing electronica and listening to Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode, Eric went to study in Las Vegas and – on a whim – joined a choir. “It absolutely changed my life. I thought, that’s the sound that’s been in my heart my whole life. It was a singular moment and it absolutely transformed me.”

As conductor of the Eric Whitacre Singers, he has released several chart-topping albums, including 2010’s best-selling Light and Gold. A sought-after guest conductor, Eric has conducted choral and instrumental concerts around the globe, including concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. In addition to several collaborations with Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer, he has worked with British pop icons Laura Mvula, Imogen Heap and Annie Lennox.

What I love about writing for voices is that sometimes a simple minor triad is all you need – you don’t need to dress it up. It’s sophisticated because it’s so simple. And it has a gravity to it. It goes deep, at a cellular level.

Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre interview

Interview: Eric Whitacre

45:50

What's included

The choir

Tutti

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Eh Evo
  • Aah Eh Aah
  • Ooh Aah Ooh
  • Mmm Aah Mmm
  • Breathy Mmm
  • Short Aah Full Out
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Perf 4th)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Perf 5th)
  • Cloud Grace Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Cloud Grace Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Rhythmic Evo Lah
  • Rhythmic Evo Nah
  • Rhythmic Evo Dee
  • Episodic Ahh (NV to Vib)
  • Episodic Ooh (NV to Vib)
  • Episodic Mmm (NV to Vib)
  • Aah Full Out
  • Microtonal Bending Aah
  • Microtonal Oscillating Aah
  • Microtonal Shift
  • Microtonal Cluster Pitch Aah
  • Fluctuating Ooh
  • Breathy Ooh
  • fp
  • Erupting Hums
  • Ricochet Aah Nng
  • Aleatoric Aah
  • Bubbling
  • Harmonic
  • NZ
  • Cyclical
  • Whistle Mmm Blend
  • Pitched Air
  • FX1 (Long)
  • FX2 (Short)

Sopranos

  • Legato Ahh
  • Legato Mmm
  • Legato Ooh
  • Legato Oh
  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Oh
  • Soft Breathy Aah
  • Long Nanana
  • Short Aah
  • Short Ooh
  • Short Mmm
  • Short Oh
  • Short Soft Breathy Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • FX1 (Long)
  • FX2 (Short)

Altos

  • Legato Ahh
  • Legato Mmm
  • Legato Ooh
  • Legato Oh
  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Oh
  • Soft Breathy Aah
  • Long Nanana
  • Short Aah
  • Short Ooh
  • Short Mmm
  • Short Oh
  • Short Soft Breathy Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • FX1 (Long)
  • FX2 (Short)

Tenors

  • Legato Ahh
  • Legato Mmm
  • Legato Ooh
  • Legato Oh
  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Oh
  • Soft Breathy Aah
  • Long Nanana
  • Short Aah
  • Short Ooh
  • Short Mmm
  • Short Oh
  • Short Soft Breathy Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • FX1 (Long)
  • FX2 (Short)

Basses

  • Legato Ahh
  • Legato Mmm
  • Legato Ooh
  • Legato Oh
  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Oh
  • Soft Breathy Aah
  • Long Nanana
  • Short Aah
  • Short Ooh
  • Short Mmm
  • Short Oh
  • Short Soft Breathy Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • FX1 (Long)
  • FX2 (Short)

The Evolutions

Tutti

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Long Eh Evo
  • Aah Eh Aah
  • Ooh Aah Ooh
  • Mmm Aah Mmm
  • Breathy Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 3rd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Perf 4th)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Perf 5th)
  • Cloud Grace Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Cloud Grace Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Rhythmic Evo Lah
  • Rhythmic Evo Nah
  • Rhythmic Evo Dee
  • Episodic Ahh (NV to Vib)
  • Episodic Ooh (NV to Vib)
  • Episodic Mmm (NV to Vib)
  • Aah Full Out
  • Microtonal Bending Aah
  • Microtonal Oscillating Aah
  • Microtonal Shift
  • Microtonal Cluster Pitch Aah
  • Fluctuating Ooh
  • Breathy Ooh
  • fp
  • Erupting Hums
  • Ricochet Aah Nng
  • Aleatoric Aah
  • Bubbling
  • Harmonic
  • NZ
  • Cyclical
  • Whistle Mmm Blend
  • Pitched Air

Sopranos

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)

Altos

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)

Tenors

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)

Basses

  • Long Aah
  • Long Ooh
  • Long Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Aah
  • Dynamic Swell Ooh
  • Dynamic Swell Mmm
  • Dynamic Swell Eeh
  • Episodic Aah Nah
  • Episodic Ooh Nah
  • Episodic Mmm Hyah
  • Episodic Aah Dah
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Min 2nd
  • Pitch Clash Aah (Maj 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Min 2nd)
  • Pitch Clash Static Aah (Maj 2nd)

Mics & mixes

Mics

  • C(lose)
  • T(ree)
  • A(mbient)
  • Outrigger
  • Mid
  • Gallery

Stereo mix

  • Big
  • Medium
  • Small

Videos

Paul Thomson playing piano at his studio desk

Adding Choirs to Your Scores

34:04
Writing An Emotional Piece Of Music

Writing an Emotional Piece in 30 Minutes

37:16
Eric Whitacre Choir "Write a Choral Symphony" Youtube thumbnail

How To Write A Choral Symphony

31:39
Eric Whitacre Choir How It Works Youtube thumbnail

How It Works: Eric Whitacre Choir

11:34
Eric Whitacre Choir How It Works Evo Grid Youtube thumbnail

How it Works: The Evo Grid

10:07

Testimonials

Its raw emotional power will transform a score into a thing of majesty.

An exquisite, stunning library that places the very spirit of the human voice in a sublime package, all under the masterful direction of a choral champion.

FAQs

How do you add Eric Whitacre Choir into Kontakt?

You don’t! Eric Whitacre Choir is a dedicated plugin available as VST, AAX and AU so it can be used directly in your favourite DAW.


What software will I need to run Eric Whitacre Choir?

We provide an AU, VST2, VST3 and an AAX, so as long as your chosen DAW supports one of those plugin formats, you’re good to go.


Why do I need this product?

Consider this the new core part of the orchestral range. Adding a choir to your composition can be as second nature as adding percussion, for example. This library’s voice, under Eric’s scrutiny, is a brand new world of sounds and aching emotion waiting to become part of the repertoire for composers.

Read more FAQs for this product

Tech specs

Mac system requirements

Mac OS X 10.15 to OS 13

Minimum: 2.8GHz i5 minimum (quad-core), 8GB RAM

Recommended: 2.8GHz I7 (six-core), 16GB RAM

Both Intel and Apple Silicon/ARM are supported

32-bit systems are not supported.

PC system requirements

Windows 10 or Windows 11 - (Latest Service Pack, 64-bit)

Minimum: Intel 2.8 GHz i5 (quad-core) or AMD Ryzen 5, 8GB RAM

Recommended: Intel Core i7 6th gen and later or AMD Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM

32-bit systems are not supported.

File size

~88550 samples

164.60 GB download size

164.60 GB disk space required during install

Too large to download? Choose hard drive delivery at checkout

Eric Whitacre Choir sounds great with…

Albion Tundra
  • At the edge of silence
    Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions
  • Inspiring chamber strings textures
    Ambient Guitars
  • Distorted soundscapes for cinematic scoring
    Spitfire Symphony Orchestra
  • Behind award-winning composers…
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