Storm

The 21-year-old composer began writing CLOUDBURST in 1991 at the request of conductor Jocelyn Jensen for her high school choir, and the final version was published in 1995. The text is from the poem El cántaro roto (The Broken Pitcher) by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. The work combines aleatoric movement of the voices with sound and noise effects, creating associations of thunderstorm and rain. Cloudburst is part of Stephen Layton's chamber choir Polyphony's album of Whitaker's work, nominated for a Grammy in 2007.