The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sometimes referred to as Motab, is a choir made up of 360 volunteers. They have already won several Grammys and Emmys. This choir is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is entirely funded by the sales of their albums, concert tickets and donations.

President Ronald Reagan once called the choir “America's choir.” The 360 ​​volunteers are all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often called Mormons). Most members live near Salt Lake City, because one of the requirements for being part of the choir is that you live not too far from the Mormon Tabernacle. This is done to avoid having to travel too far to attend weekly rehearsals and TV and radio broadcasts. The choir members are not paid for their performances or participation in rehearsals and broadcasts. They are often married couples and some families have a generations-long tradition of participating in the choir.

The choir was founded in August 1847, just one month after the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has produced the weekly radio broadcast “Music and the Spoken Word” since July 15, 1929. This is one of the longest running radio broadcasts in the world. The show has also been on television since the early 1960s and is broadcast worldwide on approximately 1,500 radio and TV stations.

The minimum age for membership is 25 years. Currently you can be part of the choir for a maximum of 20 years and the maximum age is 60 years. In this way they constantly try to let in new blood.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has valued music in its worship services since its inception. The church already had choirs in both Kirtland, Ohio and Nauvoo, Illinois. It is no surprise, then, that within a month of the pioneers' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, a choir was formed for the first General Conference.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is named after the Salt Lake Tabernacle where it performed for more than a hundred years. The Tabernacle was completed in 1867 and the choir held its first concert there on July 4, 1873. The Tabernacle also has an organ consisting of 11,623 pipes, making it one of the largest and complex organs in the world. The organ sound is often referred to as characteristic of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, although it also often sings a cappella or with the accompaniment of a full orchestra.

The choir started out small and rather undisciplined. In 1869, Georges Careless was appointed musical director and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir began to improve noticeably musically. Under his leadership, the first large choir was formed by adding several smaller choral groups to the Salt Lake choir. This larger choir, with just over 300 voices, sang for the first time at the General Conference in October 1873. From then on, the size of the choir matched the size of the Tabernacle. On September 1, 1910, the choir sang “Let the Mountains shout for Joy” as their first recording. Three hundred of the six hundred members of the choir showed up for the recording.

Later musical directors provided stable vocal training and worked to improve the quality of the choir. The choir also continued to improve as a whole and increased its repertoire from about a hundred songs to more than a thousand. In July 1929 the choir broadcast their first radio broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word and in 1950 they recorded their first LP. From then on they also performed several times a year and in the 1950s they toured Europe for the first time. During that period they also won a Grammy for the recording of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Since their inception more than 150 years ago, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has performed and recorded music worldwide. Some of the notable milestones include:

The choir has already performed for ten US presidents. Very special is that they also sang at the inauguration of five presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson (1965), Richard M. Nixon (1969), Ronald Reagan (1981), George Bush (1989) and George W. Bush (2001).

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir holds an annual Christmas concert at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City in December. The concert usually consists of four performances: a dress rehearsal on Thursday, a full performance on Friday and Saturday, and a shortened performance on Sunday after Sunday's Music and the Spoken Word. Every year about 84,000 people attend these Christmas concerts. Tickets for the concert are free but will be randomly distributed in an online lottery. A live album (CD and DVD) will be released afterwards and the concert will be broadcast on TV later in the year.

There are often guest appearances by artists and a guest narrator is often asked to read the Christmas story from the Gospel according to Luke.

For the first time in 20 years, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will perform in Belgium. You can be there on July 11, 2016 Bozar in Brussels. Tickets are for sale online.