Mormon Tabernacle Choir coming to St. Louis June 20th
It’s been a while since I have posted. Busy, busy bee I am between my day job and preparing for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I am serving on a committee to host the choir and a group of community leaders.
Most of the area’s 15,000 Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons) can’t remember a time when the Tabernacle Choir has performed here. It’s been 51 years 
after all.
In subsequent posts I’ll share my involvement and behind-the-scenes activities, any I experience, as well as little known trivia facts about the choir.
Here is one: National Geographic’s “USA101″ recently named the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as one of America’s top icons.
Mostly, I hope many of you will experience the concert for yourself. We have heard them on TV at the Olympics and presidential inaugurations or weekly on the radio, but it is an amazing experience to hear the choir in person.
And the choir in recent years has embraced new styles of music with its own unique interpretation. Let’s say, the choir is more “hip” than in the past. Maybe “contemporary” would be the word. Regardless, I like the direction. My favorite numbers are the feet tapping ones.
From the press release:
“I think people, especially in these times, resonate with the songs and
hymns sung by the Choir,” says Mack Wilberg, music director. “There is
something for everyone, from the classics to Broadway, from music of the
world, to American folk hymns and spirituals.”The Choir will perform such crowd favorites as “Amazing Grace,” “Danny Boy,”
and of course its Grammy Award-winning rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the
Republic.” Also on the program is the rousing Nigerian carol “Betelehemu,”
which according to the Choir’s announcer Lloyd Newell “won’t be like
anything you’ve heard from this Choir.” It combines singing, clapping,
shouting and swaying, while accompanied by stirring percussion music.
Tickets for the 2009 concerts are on sale at all concert venues, through
various online ticket agencies, over the phone and also online at
www.mormontabernaclechoir.org.
Box Office
St. Louis
Saturday, June 20 Scottrade Center
7:30 p.m. www.ticketmaster.com <http://www.ciweb.org>
(314) 241-1888 Scottrade
Dana King, 45, volunteers in public affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- St. Louis Missouri South Stake. She chairs the annual Discover Your Roots conference and serves on the Friends of Dred Scott committee. Dana is a contributor to outreach initiatives: knowyourneighbornet.org and BlackLDS.org. Dana is married, mother of two teens, and runs her interior design business. 
Undoubtedly, the choir is an American treasure. If you’ve been able to hear them in their native element (i.e., the old Tabernacle in Salt Lake) as I did during Benson’s tenure, then you can only hope the acoustics in the Scottrade Center won’t be too imperfect. And yes, for better or for worse, the choir is indeed expanding its repertoire. Worse in the sense that they have embraced much that is secular. Better in the sense that they’ve started to record at least a few sacred choral classics. However, to those of us who thoroughly enjoy traditional sacred music, there is still much that is untouched by the choir. Maybe Ms. King, who will be behind the scenes, can broach the question of why, after all of these years, has the choir left a substantial amount of the historical sacred choral standards untouched. Yes, there has been an Ave Verum Corpus and a Kyrie recorded, and I have seen them perform a Te Deum on KBYU, but by and large, the great Masses in their entirety are no where to be found in the choir’s vast recording collection. Who knows? Perhaps when the choir realized what they were actually singing in Ave Verum Corpus and Te Deum, they blushed since the lyrics in these pieces affirm the historical doctrine of transubstantiation and the holiness of the Catholic Church, respectively. Oh well, at least the world is blessed to have the Tallis Scholars, who have been to St. Louis in the last few years.