When we talk about The Sacred Veil, we’re really talking about a long friendship, a shared language, and one family’s deeply personal story.

For this performance, we wanted to let the voices behind the piece speak for themselves as much as possible.

A FRIENDSHIP BEHIND THE MUSIC

Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony “Tony” Silvestri have been collaborators and close friends for many years. Long before The Sacred Veil, Whitacre was drawn to Silvestri’s poetry and their shared love of choral storytelling.

The genesis of The Sacred Veil was unexpectedly simple. Tony wrote a poem he planned to share at a family funeral and left it on Eric’s piano. Whitacre later recalled that the piece “was conceived almost by chance—when Silvestri left a poem… on [my] piano,” and that reading those words led him straight to the keyboard to begin composing.

From that seed, the idea of a much larger work began to grow—one that would trace the story of Tony’s life with his wife Julie, who died of ovarian cancer at 36.

FINDING WORDS FOR GRIEF

For Tony, writing this poetry was not a quick response to tragedy. It took time.

He has said that The Sacred Veil emerged after “a long time to think and to grieve, and not to grieve,” describing the first movement as a “35,000-foot view of everything that I have learned about this grief process and about life and death.”

Silvestri has also been clear about how risky the project felt—not artistically, but emotionally:

“We’ve touched a third rail in our society, which doesn’t do grief well.”

Working on The Sacred Veil became a way for him to process that experience through art. He’s described it as allowing him to revisit his grief “in a very powerful way,” recognizing that he “hadn’t fully grieved, because [he] hadn’t processed it in art.”

Over time, those poems, Julie’s own words, and Eric’s text formed what he calls “an intensely personal hour of healing meditation for choir, piano and cello.”

COMPOSING HONESTY, NOT A REQUIEM

On Eric’s side, the goal was never to write a traditional requiem. He’s said very plainly:

“The whole idea of The Sacred Veil was to be as honest as possible about what actually happens when someone goes through this.”

Rather than approaching the story in “a grand, liturgical way,” Whitacre wanted to stay “very human, [very] personal,” focused on the real events and emotions Tony and Julie lived through.

That decision shaped everything: the scale (chamber choir, cello, piano), the text (a mosaic of Tony’s poems, Julie’s journal entries and emails, and Eric’s own lines), and the way the music moves from warmth to dissonance to a quieter kind of radiance.

Whitacre has also talked about building the entire piece around Tony’s image of a “veil” that separates the world of the living and those who have passed—an image that becomes both a poetic idea and a musical one.

Eric Whitacre recording "The Sacred Veil" with Los Angeles Master Chorale, Lisa Edwards (piano), Jeffrey Zeigler (cello). © Eric Whitacre/Jamie Pham

WHAT THEY HOPE LISTENERS FEEL

When they talk about The Sacred Veil, both Eric and Tony come back again and again to the same themes: honesty, courage, and comfort.

Apple Music’s notes describe the work as “their story—one of love, anguish, loss, and the search for inner peace—told through a mosaic of texts and poetry” by Silvestri, Julie, and Whitacre. The “brutal candour of medical records,” simple love notes, flashes of humor, and deep friendship are all “bonded together in music of profound beauty.”

For Tony, that mosaic is about giving grief a larger voice than he could alone. For Eric, it’s about creating a space where that voice can be heard safely—without turning away from the hardest parts.

Taken together, they’ve called the work “a powerful undertaking,” but also a kind of invitation: to look directly at the realities of illness and loss, and to find, somehow, that love and light are still there.

HEAR PACIFIC CHORALE’S ONE-NIGHT-ONLY PERFORMANCE

As performers, we carry this history with great care. When we step into The Sacred Veil, we’re stepping into a story that doesn’t belong to us—but which echoes many of our own lives, and likely many of yours.

Our role is to honor Eric and Tony’s honesty, to hold space for Julie’s words and memory, and to offer a musical setting where listeners can feel what they need to feel—whether that is recognition, release, or simple quiet.

If that kind of space sounds meaningful to you right now, we would be honored to have you with us.

Learn more about the concert and reserve your seat for March 21.