What is the Virtual Choir?

The Virtual Choir is a user-generated choir that brings together singers from around the world and their love of music in a new way through the use of technology.

Singers record and upload their videos from locations all over the world. Each one of the videos is then synchronised and combined into one single performance to create the Virtual Choir.

It began in 2009 as a simple experiment in social media when one young woman – a fan of Eric’s music – recorded a video of herself singing “Sleep” and shared it on YouTube. Moved by the video, Eric responded by sending a call out to his online fans to purchase Polyphony’s recording, record themselves singing along to it, and upload the result. Eric was so impressed by the result that he decided to push the concept to the next level by recording himself conducting ‘Lux Aurumque’, asking Virtual Choir members to sing along to that and the first Virtual Choir was created.

Now with more than forty million views, the VC phenomenon has reached all corners of the world, inspiring more and more singers to join each year. The VC has grown from 185 singers in VC1 to over 8,500 videos for VC5 from more than 120 countries.

The VC videos have featured on worldwide TV (ABC in the US and BBC in the UK) and as installations across the globe including the Millennium Bridge, London as part of the 2012 Olympics, the opening of the Titanic Belfast 100-year anniversary exhibition as well as at the closing plenary of Davos World Economic Forum at 2013. The VC has also been seen on the main stage of the revered TED conference, the Paley Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and at events for Google, UNICEF and the United Nations amongst others.