TheTabernacle Choir at Temple Square, formerly known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, is an American choir, acting as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It has performed in the Salt Lake Tabernacle for over 100 years.[3] The Tabernacle houses an organ, consisting of 11,623 pipes,[4] which usually accompanies the choir.
The choir was founded on August 22, 1847, twenty-nine days after the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. Prospective singers must be church members who are eligible for a temple recommend, between 25 and 55 years of age at the start of choir service, and live within 100 miles (160 km) of Temple Square.
The Tabernacle was completed in October 1867 and the choir held its first concert there on July 4, 1873.[9]
The choir started out fairly small and rather undisciplined. On April 6, 1869, George Careless was appointed as the choir's conductor and the Tabernacle Choir began to improve musically. 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 6–8, 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"[10] as their first ever recording. Three hundred of the 600 members showed up for the recording.[11]
Since July 15, 1929, the choir has performed a weekly radio broadcast, Music & the Spoken Word, which is one of the longer-running continuous radio network broadcasts in the world.[12]
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. On July 15, 1929, the choir performed its first radio broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. By 1950, the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square 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."
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.
On October 5, 2018, the choir retired the name "The Mormon Tabernacle Choir" and adopted the name "The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square" in order to align with the direction of LDS Church leadership regarding the use of terms "Mormon" and "LDS" in referencing church members. The new name retains the reference to the historic Salt Lake Tabernacle, which has been the choir's home for over 150 years, and its location on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.[13]
Logo from 2004 for the Tabernacle Choir's celebrations of 75 years of Music & the Spoken Word
Since its establishment, the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square has performed and recorded extensively, both in the United States (where U.S. President Ronald Reagan called it "America's Choir"[21]) and around the world. The following are some of its key points:
Visited twenty-eight countries outside the United States.
Released more than 130 musical compilations and several films and videotapes.
Reached more than 100 million YouTube views on its channel (in October 2017).[22]
"Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" became the choir's first video to surpass 10 million YouTube views (in July 2020).[23]
The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square has performed for ten presidents of the United States beginning with William Howard Taft.[9] The choir has also performed at the inaugurations of United States presidents Lyndon B. Johnson (1965), Richard M. Nixon (1969), Ronald Reagan (1981), George H. W. Bush (1989), George W. Bush (2001),[24] and Donald Trump (2017).[25]
Other notable events the choir has performed at include the following:
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:
A "heritage tour," which would have taken the Choir to various European venues, had been planned for 2021, but was postponed to 2022,[41] before subseuquently being canceled.[42] In 2023, the choir announced it would embark on a multi-year, multi-stop global ministry tour. The first stop took the choir to Mexico City, Mexico for six days, where they performed multiple concerts, engaged in service projects, and recorded a music video.[43] In late 2023, the choir announced that the next stop in their tour would be the Philippines in 2024.[44]
Christmas concerts
Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square performing in the Conference Center in 2014
The choir performs an annual Christmas concert in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City during the month of December. Typically, the concert consists of three performances: a Thursday dress rehearsal, followed by Friday and Saturday concerts. The combined audience for each concert series is approximately 63,000. Tickets to the concert are free, and are available on a first-come, first-served basis.[45] A live album (CD/DVD) is typically released, along with the concert being aired on PBS and BYUtv, during December of the following year. The concert traditionally concludes with a performance of "Angels, from the Realms of Glory".
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 have included:
2023: Broadway actor Michael Maliakel[64] and actress Lesley Nicol
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 available on a first-come, first-served basis. A guest artist is typically invited every year. Past guest artists have included:
The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square has about fifteen staff members including a president, directors, organists, a Music and the Spoken Word announcer, and two business-related staff members.
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.
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