I don't know about all the American composers you guys keep talking about so much, but there's some really exciting church music being written in the UK at the moment. Maybe the church is a bigger musical force over here, I dunno. Tarik O'Regan (
Tarik O'Regan) is definitely one of my favourite composers right now; you can listen to, and look at the first page of, pretty much all of his works on his website (there are some nice instrumental ones too). He tends to mix exciting rhythmic ideas with stuff taken from plainsong, often experimenting with unusual choral textures like that you'll see in the A1 and A2 lines if you go to the last 'choral and vocal' piece on page five of this section under the heading 'samples' on his website (it's called 'Gratias Tibi'). His newest pieces, 'Scattered Rhymes', are particularly rhythmically complex - I
think one choir is largely notated as in plainsong, to use speech rhythms, and the other conventionally notated (he certainly does this for his 'Magnificat' anyway). It's a beautiful and intriguing way to create 'wash of sound' textures without relying on counterpoint; the effect does remind me a lot of 15th and 16th century polyphony (especially Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli for some reason). Still, pretty much all of his music feels very modern. In his 'Dorchester Canticles' he writes for organ, 2 choirs, harp and percussion (if I remember correctly), and the percussion really makes it that bit more fantastic. I think it's very exciting and possibly a new direction for choral writing, especially in the church.
Jonathan Dove is another one I like a lot at the moment; he creates very exciting textures again, above all else, mainly by complex imitation throughout parts of reasonably uncomplicated ideas, a good example being his anthem 'Bless the Lord, O my Soul' (there are a few good recordings but the choir I sing in broadcast this on Radio 3 Live Evensong on Sunday, it should still be at
BBC - Radio 3 - Choral Evensong - Live from Sheffield Cathedral - go to 35 mins and wait about 3, then it starts). (His operas are great too).
I'm really into choral music that is led by creating evocative textures; Whitacre does through 'nice' crazy harmony, Stockhausen etc. through 'weird' crazy harmony (and more weird stuff like whispering and whistling), and now these guys largely through rhythmic and textural interest and complexity, and a treatment of stuff like plainsong with new vigour. I couldn't disagree more with whoever it was that said choral music has run out of new stuff to do.
(Edit: if anyone does listen to that broadcast, at 35mins exactly is the end of the Responses by Gabriel Jackson, another interesting modern composer. It's quite Whitacre-ish, now I come to think of it.)