Music

Three years ago, very unexpectedly, my husband and I were asked to meet with the First Presidency. We arrived at the Church Administration Building in downtown Salt Lake City to find Michael and Jackie Leavitt already there and Gary and Debbie Porter just arriving. We had already learned that Michael Leavitt had been recently called to serve as the new President of the Tabernacle Choir and Jackie had been called to serve at his side. My husband and Gary Porter were there to be called as his counselors. Shortly thereafter, Debbie Porter and I were called to serve in other capacities with the Choir. The six of us have been blessedly bound together by those callings, spectacular music, extraordinary saints, and a compelling vision since that July meeting.

After extending the callings, President Nelson pulled back the curtain on his vision for the Tabernacle Choir by suggesting to the newly called presidency, “I want you to do things that have never been done before.” The grand challenge and opportunity of that mandate were both daunting and thrilling. We all felt it.

With that challenge and motivation as the energizing vision for the way forward, the Choir Organization has in fact embraced and embarked on literal and figurative journeys that the Choir had never before undertaken. Rather than perpetuate the long tradition of primarily traveling to Europe and throughout the U.S., the Choir mobilized a traveling squad of nearly 500 people to embark on a multi-year World Tour.

On the first trip of that World Tour, the Choir traveled to Mexico, home to the second largest population of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints in the world. The Choir offered several performances, the narration of which was all done in Spanish, while the music was performed in both Spanish and English, demonstrating a unity of communication and people in compelling ways. Everything about the concerts in Mexico reflected the colorful, joyful sight, sound, and texture of that welcoming and lively culture.

The following year, the Choir traveled to the Philippines, home of the fourth largest population of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the world. Those gracious saints enthusiastically met the Choir with eager embrace as the Choir delighted them with some narration and songs prepared in Tagalog, the most common native language of their islands.

In both countries, the programs were live streamed to chapels across the countries to increase their reach and to enable viewers to delight in the joyful wonder of it all without traveling long distances. Stake centers hosted Watch Parties to welcome Church members and everyone else for activities, food, and community building before the live transmissions of the concerts began on large screens inside the buildings. The celebratory, welcoming joy of it all was glorious.

Later in 2024, the Choir traveled to Sunrise, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia, to perform for and with people in the Southeastern U.S. In Atlanta, the Choir perpetuated a relationship with the Morehouse and Spelman glee clubs that had originated shortly before. In 2023, Morehouse College had invited President Nelson to Atlanta to be honored as he was inducted into the African American Hall of Fame in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Chapel.  President Nelson was unable to attend, but he responded in a prerecorded video.

Subsequently, members of the Morehouse and Spellman glee clubs traveled to Salt Lake City to sing with the Choir in the Tabernacle on Music & the Spoken Word. That blessed interaction was followed by a return visit to Atlanta at Christmastime by a few Choir organization members to delight in the glee clubs’ Christmas concerts.

When the Choir performed in Atlanta in September, the irresistible seeds that had been generously sown and nourished between the two communities had clearly taken root and begun to bear fruit. During one concert, I watched with grateful wonder as the conductor of the Spelman Glee Club introduced a musical number he had personally composed. He explained that Mac Wilberg had arranged his composition for the combined choirs and orchestra that would perform it at that concert. The conductor of the glee club of Morehouse took his place at the podium to lead the music, while the Spelman conductor and Mac Wilberg, the Tabernacle Choir conductor, assumed seats side by side on a piano bench to play the four-handed accompaniment to the piece.

The sight of those four hands moving on that single keyboard, cooperatively and skillfully, while the combined singers from the glee clubs and the Tabernacle Choir sang the stunning song together was breathtaking. The Tabernacle Choir members, a generation older than the glee club singers, stood on risers behind the glee club performers, forming what looked like a convincing, loving embrace surrounding those younger singers. The whole improbable sight and sound were a moving metaphor of the fruition of President Nelson’s vision for embrace and unity of peoples and cultures.

Also, in an attempt to do things that have never been done before, the Choir Organization solicited recommendations from Area Presidencies in international areas asking for names of local people who might be qualified to be called to perform on an occasional basis with the Tabernacle Choir. The challenge for those interested singers to meet the standards of musical expertise, as well as be able to leave their families and jobs to travel to Salt Lake City for two weeks to rehearse and sing with the Choir at general conference, was ambitious. Despite the challenges, nearly fifty qualified international singers, called Global Participants, have completed the requisite application, met the personal and musical requirements, made arrangements with their families and their work, and traveled across continents to be outfitted in Choir attire and claim seats in the loft. The stories of their sacrifices and their tremendous joy are sweet inspiration. Those international singers have added their personalities and their breadth of international life experience to the Choir, then returned to their home countries prepared and determined to share what they have learned to build and bless around the world in new and extraordinary ways.

As all these remarkable advances have been considered and refined, the essential voices of those who know intimately the longstanding traditions that have made the Tabernacle Choir among the most famous choirs in the world, have informed the initiative.

Significant among those voices is that of Mac Wilberg, the principal conductor of the Choir. His longstanding and intimate engagement with the Choir enables him to suggest with informed and inspired wisdom, when preserving a past tradition might be more important than embracing a new one. He is both cautious and openminded as his voice advances the essential cause of the preservation of the particulars that are essential ingredients of the very identity of the Choir, and when a change might be important. Sometimes preservation of a tradition is the worthy and considered way forward; sometimes change presents new and exciting opportunities. That reminder is critical for us all as we seek to embrace newness without shunning the best of the past. A lack of careful, inspired respect for tradition can lead to tossing babies out with bath water.

Sunday programming of Music & the Spoken Word has continued much as it was originated 95 years ago. In the interest of newness, however, there has been a notable addition to the scope of what is accomplished every Sunday. For years, the principal engagement with the guests who made their way to the Tabernacle or the Conference Center was designed to welcome those guests briefly and remind them that the auditorium would soon become a recording studio. The guests were cleverly asked to please unwrap their breath mints and cough before the microphones went live.

Again, with an intention to do something that has never been done before, at the beginning of the summer, there was initiated what is called a fifteen minute “Welcome Segment” before Music & the Spoken Word begins. During those fifteen minutes, after a brief organ prelude, a Greeter stands at the front of the auditorium to welcome the guests and to offer them a few minutes of information about what they are about to hear and experience. The information might include something about the 11,623-pipe organ, the demographics of the Choir and Orchestra, the history of Music & the Spoken Word and the Tabernacle, or the composition of the day’s musical program. Of necessity, the final comment still is likely a reminder of the need to ready the hall as a recording studio and usually suggests unwrapping breath mints, but the whole addition is intended to be warm and authentic and varies from week to week. The extended, deliberate effort to address those assembled in the auditorium as essential guests is new, while the commitment to the preservation of the integrity of the hall as a recording studio remains intact.

The new Welcome Segment also includes a brief interview with a member of the Choir Organization. With an organization that includes approximately 700 marvelous, devoted, valiant people, the possibilities for interviewees is vast. The result of those interviews is always inspiring, often surprising, and regularly holy.

Recently, serving as a Greeter, I interviewed Crystal Pickering who works in the Choir Organization as a technology expert. She lends her much expertise to the cause of organization during tours via an app she created, preparing and maintaining Choir web sites, and assisting with social media. I became acquainted with Crystal in the spring after she delivered a commencement address where she was being awarded a master’s degree. Her address promptly became a viral sensation because of her extraordinary personal story.

Crystal lived almost her whole young life in foster care, shuttled from one home to another. When she turned 18, she was obligated to make her own way. Against all odds (in fact, as 1 in at least 23,000), she managed to graduate from college then earn her graduate degree. Along the way, Crystal joined the Church, married, and bore five children. She is now blessedly employed by the Church where she has grown in faith and found peace, music, and family.

She told me and everyone assembled in the Tabernacle, that the reason for her truly improbable success is threefold: she was and remains determined not to give up; she had the essential blessing of incidental angel fellow travelers who offered a voice of encouragement, a job, or a hand up when she was going down for a third time; and she had the critical and unfailing grace of God as the heavenly wind beneath her wings. Twice during her five-minute interview, the crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause. With a twinkle in her eye, Crystal concluded by sharing that she is currently in the process of decorating her annual fifteen Christmas trees. She shared that she never had Christmas as a child, and she is making up for lost time.

The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square continues its grand tradition of glorious music performed with unmistakable excellence, even as it is extending its reach in broad and deep ways to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a waiting world, which includes those affiliated with the Choir, as well as those attending performances and viewing or listening on-line. The wisdom, work, and determination of able saints, tutored by heavenly inspiration, are uniting to accomplish both the preservation of the best of the past and the embrace of the promise of the future for the Tabernacle Choir.  That bold but discerning pursuit is a worthy example for us all.