Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Description

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is a 360 piece choir named after the Salt Lake Tabernacle. The choir has performed in the Tabernacle for over a hundred years.

The Tabernacle houses an organ consisting of 11,623 pipes. The choir is usually accompanied by it. An orchestra or a cappella singing is used as well.

Prospective singers must be LDS Church members who are eligible for a temple recommend, be between 25 and 55 years of age at the start of choir service, and live within 100 miles of Temple Square.

History

The choir was founded in August 1847, one month after the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley.

The Tabernacle was completed in 1867 and the choir held its first concert there on July 4, 1873.

The choir started out fairly small and rather undisciplined. In 1869, George Careless was appointed as the choir's conductor and the Tabernacle Choir began to musically improve. Under Careless, the first large choir was assembled by adding smaller choral groups to the main Salt Lake Choir. This larger choir, just over 300, sang at the church's October 1873 general conference. It was at this point that the choir began to match the size of the spacious Tabernacle. On September 1, 1910, the choir sang the song, "Let the Mountains shout for Joy", as their first ever recording. Three hundred of the 600 members showed up for the recording.

Since July 15, 1929, the choir has performed a weekly radio broadcast called Music & the Spoken Word, which is one of the longest-running continuous radio network broadcasts in the world.

Later directors brought more solid vocal training and worked to raise the standards of the choir. The choir also began improving as an ensemble and increased its repertoire from around one hundred songs to nearly a thousand. In July 1929, the choir performed its first radio broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. By 1950, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed numerous concerts each year and had released its first long-playing recording. During the 1950s, the choir made its first tour of Europe and earned a Grammy Award for its recording of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Later directors of the choir continued to hone and refine the choir's sound.

At the end of the choir's 4,165th live broadcast on July 12, 2009, the show's host, Lloyd D. Newell, announced another milestone that the show had hit: the completion of its 80th year in existence. The show has been televised since the early 1960s and is now broadcast worldwide through approximately 1,500 radio and television stations.

Milestones

Since its establishment, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has performed and recorded extensively, not only in the United States (where U.S. President Ronald Reagan called it "America's Choir") but around the world. The following are some of its milestones:

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has performed for ten presidents of the United States beginning with William Howard Taft. The choir has also performed at the inaugurations of United States presidents Lyndon B. Johnson (1965), Richard M. Nixon (1969), Ronald Reagan (1981), George Bush (1989), George W. Bush (2001), and Donald Trump (2017).

Other notable events the choir has performed at include the following:

It has also participated in several significant events, including:

Tours

From its first national tour in 1893, under the direction of Evan Stephens, to the Chicago World's Fair, the choir has performed in locations around the world, including:

Christmas concerts

The choir holds a yearly Christmas concert in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City during the month of December. Typically, the concert consists of four shows: a Thursday dress rehearsal, Friday and Saturday shows and a Sunday abbreviated concert after the morning Music &the Spoken Word program. Starting in 2015, the Sunday morning performance following Music & the Spoken Word will no longer be presented. The combined audience for the four days of concerts is approximately 84,000. Tickets to the concert are free, and were formerly distributed through a random internet drawing, but beginning in 2016 tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. A live album (CD/DVD) is typically released, along with the concert being aired on PBS, during the December of the following year.

Guest artists participate and sing with the choir most years. A guest narrator is also invited most years to read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke. Past guest artists include:

Pioneer Day concerts

The choir holds a yearly summer concert in mid-late July as part of Utah's Pioneer Day celebrations. Unlike the Christmas concerts, there are only two shows: one on Friday and the other on the following Saturday. The tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis. A guest artist is typically invited every year.

Leadership

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has about 15 staff members including a president, directors, organists, a Music and the Spoken Word announcer, and two business-related staff members.

Music directors

Mack Wilberg is the current director, with associate director Ryan Murphy.

Organists

Richard Elliott, Clay Christiansen, Andrew Unsworth, Bonnie Goodliffe, and Linda Margetts are the current organists.

Music and the Spoken Word announcers

Since its inception in 1929, the "spoken word" segment of the program has been voiced by four separate individuals. The original writer, producer, and announcer of the spoken portion of the broadcast was Edward (Ted) Kimball, who would stand at the top of a tall ladder and announce the name of each performance piece into the microphone suspended from the Tabernacle ceiling. Kimball remained at the post for only 11 months, when he was replaced by Richard L. Evans, who continued in that capacity until his death in 1971. J. Spencer Kinard took over as announcer in 1972 until he stepped down in 1990. Lloyd D. Newell has been the announcer since then.

Awards and inductions

The choir has a number of awards, including the National Medal of Arts (2003), a Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus (1960), and three Emmy Awards (1987, 2013, 2014). The choir is also an inductee to the American Classical Music Hall of Fame (2015) and the National Association of Broadcasters Broadcasting Hall of Fame (2004). The largest act to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 is the 320-person Mormon Tabernacle Choir, whose version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" reached No. 13 according to the The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits in 1959.

Other awards

1944

1961

1981

1988

2003

2004

2006

2010

Recordings

Since its first recording in 1910, the choir has earned five gold albums (two in 1963-The Lord's Prayer and Handel's Messiah, one in 1979- The Joy of Christmas, and two in 1985- The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols and Joy to the World) and two platinum albums (in 1991- Hallmark Christmas: Carols of Christmas and 1992- Hallmark Christmas: Celebrate Christmas!). The choir has made over 300 recordings and continues to produce albums. For some live performances and albums, the choir has collaborated with large orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and the newly formed Orchestra at Temple Square. The choir's own record label was formed in 2003.

Several award-winning popular artists have reflected on the beauty of the choir's music publicly including: Gladys Knight (of Gladys Knight and the Pips), Sting (of The Police), James Taylor, Ric Ocasek (of The Cars), and The Osmonds.

Filmography