TCATS #333 - New Album Released!

Today's post was supposed to be "Reminiscing, Part 2", but I'll save that for next week if that's OK by you. I wanted, instead, to announce the official release of our new EP album called "When You Believe: A Night at the Movies". The album has five tracks on it, including songs from The Avengers, Star Wars, O Brother Where Are Thou?, Prince of Egypt, and Frozen. While a part of me wishes we would have included a few more songs on the EP and made it a full album (we certainly have other movie songs in our repertoire), I'm happy to see how well-received it's been thus far, all around the world. Some reviews on Amazon included the following sentiments: 

"Absolutely loved the music! I want more! I really enjoyed listening to each track. Duel of the Fates was my favorite."
 
"Hollywood should tap into this national treasure, the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, on a frequent basis. Too bad this was such a short list of music. Bravo!"

Kenny Mac on Twitter said "Stoked to announce that I had the immense honor to have done an original arrangement of music from the Avengers series with The Tabernacle Choir. Experience a brand new take on music from the series, now with the addition of a 360-person choir!"

In an article the Deseret News published, Mack Wilberg and Scott Barrick (the Choir's general manager) had this to say about the EP:

“With this EP, the one thing that was of prime importance was that the music had to be inspirational and it had to be faith-promoting,” the choir director said. “Both ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Avengers’ are about overcoming darkness, darkness to light. … The music has to have an integrity about it.”

“But we also tried to be cognizant of reaching out to new audiences,” Barrick added. “We tried to be aware of release dates of movies or anything that we could tie into like the ‘Star Wars’ day. … The pieces that Mack outlined were primary, but we tried to leverage all the other pieces so that we could share this music with as broad an audience as possible.”

A huge amount of kudos should go to the Orchestra at Temple Square for the amazing work they did on this EP. Sure, the Choir has some minor contributions to both the Star Wars piece and the Avengers piece, but for those two songs in particular, the Orchestra stole the show, as they say. One of the percussionists (drummers) in the Orchestra, Danny, on the eve of the EP release said "Are all y'all as excited as I am to listen to the Avengers Medley tomorrow? Bring it on!" That made me smile because I remember watching him go crazy on the drums as we were recording the medley. In fact, during the recording Mack Wilberg actually told him he could play louder (which never happens, haha!) and louder he did play! All of the percussionists and orchestra were just playing up a storm and having so much fun with it all. 

We all did. 

And while the Avengers and Star Wars tracks were big and epic and amazing, my personal favorite was "When You Believe" from The Prince of Egypt. That song just gets me every time. I can only imagine how the children of Israel felt after being enslaved for so long and finally being able to be FREE. What a beautiful tribute to faith, endurance, and believing.

Our next album will be the Christmas Concert album featuring music from last year's concert. I'm sure that'll be released sometime in October or November. As for albums after that.... well, at the rate we're going with COVID-19, I'm really not sure. We might have quite a dry spell ahead of us!

Until next time, God be with you.