MTC Week #93 - Of Red, Aussies, and Sylvia McNair

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has become good at being flexible. 

So was the case on Thursday morning (day of our weekly rehearsal) when we received an email from the Choir office saying that ESPN has asked the Choir if they'd do a recording of the University of Utah "Fight" song as part of their College Game Day segment that coming Saturday. Apparently, ESPN had ran a story on BYU's Tanner Mangum that featured the Choir singing “Hallelujah,” and had received a lot of positive feedback on it. As that story had put the music of the Choir in front of people who might not usually see it, the Choir Presidency approved this last-minute request by ESPN to record the Ute fight song.

As you can imagine, there were plenty of comments from choir members regarding this "opportunity" as we congregated that evening in the choir loft. I, personally, am not a huge football fan. (Ok, what am I saying? I'm not really into football whatsoever) So I was fairly neutral about the whole thing, even though I did get my bachelors degree from BYU and I do cheer for them whenever I find myself in that rare moment of watching a game. For the die-hard BYU fans however, it was a hard thing. But we can do hard things, right? While I can't say for complete certainty that everyone saw the bigger picture of what this was all about, I feel good about saying that the majority probably did.

So, with 15 min of rehearsal time, the words on the big screen in front of us, and ESPN cameras ready for action, we sang the Ute Fight Song and hoped it would help ESPN viewers get exposure to the Choir and maybe even look us up to get more information. Who knows?

[As an aside, upon conclusion of the recording, a bunch of the men started singing "Rise and shout, the cougars are out...", just for the fun of it.]

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Guest artist Sylvia McNair was back with the Choir today and sang two numbers on Music & the Spoken Word: This Little Light of Mine, and Climb Every Mountain. We were honored to accompany her and she sounded wonderful. We're always excited when guest artists come and sing with the Choir and we hope that they feel the Spirit and know how much we love and appreciate them. Sylvia was last with us when she performed at concerts we did for the ACDA convention last February.

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Lastly, we had a small team of three (that I noticed), from Australia, with us today on the broadcast. One of them was singing with the choir and the other two were filming the choir. Apparently they are doing a "Faith" documentary for a news station and had come up to experience the choir first hand. I'm sure things like this happen all the time--whether we know about them or not. People are interested and want to know more...

Until next time, God be with you.