Until very recently, a Venn diagram depicting "composers for wind ensembles and choirs" and "hunky American models signed to the Storm agency" would have featured two quite distinct, non-intersecting balloons.

That was before Eric Whitacre.

I first heard Whitacre's music performed by the National Youth Choir of Scotland. NYCoS director Christopher Bell had, I believe, picked up on the composer from the Hyperion label recordings by Stephen Layton's choir Polyphony, whose Cloudburst collection is such a celebrated disc it was among those reissued recently to mark the label's 30th anniversary.

Quite where Whitacre's instinctive – and distinctive – writing for the human voice came from remains something of a mystery. The story, now suspiciously well-rehearsed, goes that he was an unremarkable student at the University of Nevada, playing in rock bands, until he sang Mozart's Requiem with the college choir, lured into participation by the cute soprano section. Seduced by choral music, he went on to Juilliard in New York and studied with composer John Corigliano, by which time his first choral work was already in print. A composition for wind band, Ghost Train, made him famous across American college campuses, but his recent star status for vocal music has sprung as much from the attention he has had in the UK.

His music is now performed by choirs up and down the country. Although challenging to sing and audibly modern, it is highly melodic and atmospheric, with clever harmonies and layering of voices, and effortlessly straddles the ground between the religious and the secular, setting texts from the Bible (the sublime When David Heard) as well as poetry of e.e.cummings, Emily Dickinson and Octavio Paz. Performed by an ensemble of the quality of Polyphony – or NYCoS – his writing can be almost unbearably moving.

He is now troubling the upper reaches of the classical charts on a regular basis with his own choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, which has revisited his back catalogue and added some new pieces on two Decca albums, Light & Gold and the recently released Water Night. At the same time he has been recruiting "choir geeks" around the world for his Virtual Choir, which performs his work on a global stage via the medium of the internet. The last outing at the start of this month had almost 3000 participating singers in 73 different countries. And yes, he is also a good-looking dude, who has been signed up by the same firm that represents Kate Moss and Cindy Crawford.

These days Whitacre, who is now in his early 40s, lives in London and has been granted the UK musical establishment accolade of his own BBC Prom concert in the newly announced 2012 season. The late-night concert on August 29 will feature a new Olympics-related composition, Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Somewhat late in the day for the Games, you might think, but then Whitacre is really in a category all his own.