TCATS #412 - Sunday in Pics

Things went pretty much like clockwork this week as we met Tuesday, Thursday, and then today (Sunday) to prepare for this week's Music & the Spoken Word (MSW), the First Presidency Christmas devotional, and our Christmas Concert on Dec 16, 17, and 18. All of these events are still closed to the general public. They are letting family members attend the weekly MSW broadcasts, as well as friends who are not of our faith, but only 100 individuals per week. And they have to be vaccinated (which I won't comment on, though it's tempting).

I thought it might be at least somewhat interesting for you to see some pics of my choir journey today--just to do something different for this blog. So without any formal introduction to these pics, here we go...

(Double-click to enlarge)

Waiting to turn left into the Conference Center parking lot

Down a corridor towards the test center

A make-shift covid testing center with ten stations

Getting issued my test

Tests waiting for the results to appear

My test station

Waiting to get through security

My wardrobe changing station (B108)

What the changing station looks like

The section that contains all of my suits & ties

Headed out to the choir seats

Conference Center view from the far right.

How things look from where I sit

The songs we performed today

If you look carefully, you can see the various teleprompters

Sorting music in the library after the performance was over. Siope and I gather music from B-56 through B-110

Another view of the music sorting process

There you have it. 

Until next time, God be with you.

TCATS #411 - Come O Come

I won't sugar coat it. Today's choir experience was just sort of ho-hum for me. I've been trying really hard not to let the covid protocols we have to follow, bother me or become my focus. But sometimes it's just too much. Coming 45 minutes earlier than normal, two to three times a week to get covid tested is fine. Inconvenient, but fine. But having to wear masks at times when we're socially distanced and then having to wear them before and after we've been singing for four hours without them, makes zero sense to me. If someone in the choir wants to enlighten me with how this can be even remotely logical, please let me know. I promise I'll listen carefully and kindly to what you have to say and will thank you for your explanation. 

Sorry. My last several posts have been covid-comment free. But I couldn't not say something today because it's unfortunately become a very real influencer on my choir experience. 

Today's broadcast was the first of several Christmas-themed ones we'll be airing from now until the end of the year. Out of today's five songs, my favorite was "O Come O Come Emmanuel." I quite enjoy songs with "haunting" melodies that are often in minor keys, and this song fits that profile. Why? Because for me, although Christmas can be cheery and bright and full of joy all wrapped up in a neat present with a bow on top, Christmas can also be a difficult and complicated time. And not only that, but the whole Christmas story of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem and giving birth to Jesus in a stable of animals had, contained within it, emotional and physical difficulties and complexities that a song like "Joy to the World" (as much as I love that song) cannot convey.

Some lyrics from "O Come O Come" that are worth pondering:

"Ransom captive Israel that mourns"
"From depths of hell Thy people save"
"Cheer us...and disperse the gloomy clouds of night"
"Make safe the way"
"Rejoice, rejoice"

Rejoice indeed.

Not a lot of choir news to share. The Choir will be rehearsing the next couple of Tuesdays (along with the normal Thursdays) to prepare for the closed-to-the-public Christmas Concert coming up soon. After that, the Choir will turn its attention to what the new year will bring: General Conference, an Easter Concert, the Heritage Tour (which may or may not happen, again), the Summer Concert, General Conference again, and Christmas again. And so the cycle goes. 

May your plea that Christ come to you during this Christmas holiday, be answered in personal and miraculous ways.

Until next time, God be with you.

TCATS #410 - The Teleprompter. A Love/Hate Relationship

As mentioned in a previous blog post, one of the goals of the Choir --now that we've resumed singing-- is to do a better job at singing to our audience directly. Or in other words, not looking down much at our music so that people can see directly into our eyes and countenance. One of the ways we now accomplish this is by relying on a teleprompter, which consists of probably 14 different strategically placed monitors. The idea is that no matter where you are in the choir seats, your eyes won't have to shift too far from where the director is standing (and thus make it look like you're looking directly at the director).

A few thoughts and observations about the teleprompter:

*While it gives us the words and even does a pretty good job at indicating which part (S, A, T or B) sings at any given time, its cannot give us the notes and rhythm, obviously. So most of our concentration during rehearsal goes into memorizing entrances, who sings when, what the notes are, and what the rhythm is. 

*Even if you have a song memorized fully, I find myself tempted to look at the words. It's like my mind is in a battle of trusting what I know and having the "answers" displayed conveniently right in front of me. A constant tug-o-war!

*When I have a song *almost* memorized, I can't really shift between looking at the teleprompter and looking at straight at the director because there's a definite eye shift that would be quite obvious on camera. So then I've got to make a decision to either keep my eyes glued to the screen so that eye shift doesn't happen, or I've got to trust that my memory will come through and keep my eyes focused on the director. But when a piece of music is only in the "almost" memorized camp, why would I risk trying to rely on my fallible memory?

*If I'm not careful, I can sing an entire song and not even think once about what I'm singing about as I read the words off the prompter. It's like driving down the freeway and after 10 minutes, realizing you really haven't thought about the actual driving you've been doing. To combat this, I take some time (while waiting for my covid test results) and look through the music's words and really try and internalize them so I can think about them while I'm singing.

*I found it refreshing today when the teleprompter went down during one of our pieces (during the run through). Fortunately it was a piece in which we were actually allowed to look at our music. So I followed along in my music, trying to glance down infrequently. But I found it was nice because I could see the notes and rhythm and felt very confident all of a sudden. 

*One could argue that the teleprompter is allowing us to memorize less lyrics. And that's true. There ARE choir members who try and memorize everything each week so they don't have to look at the prompter at all. And then there are those who memorize one or two pieces, knowing that singing a song that is fully memorized is the best of feelings and may come in handy later when we might be in a situation/venue where this is no prompter.

Anyway.

Not too much more to say about the choir topic today. The broadcast went extremely well. Mack even said it went the best it could have gone. Which is rare. I think my favorite from today was "Come Ye Thankful People Come". Not only does it speak about gratitude, but I like the lyric "All are safely gathered in." After the broadcast, we stayed and recorded a piece that will be used in our Christmas Concert and after that, I got changed and then did my music library duties until noon. 

Then I got to go home.

Until next time, God be with you. And for those of you who celebrate the holiday, have a very happy Thanksgiving!

Notice how none of us are looking down at our music!

TCATS #409 - Yoked

Sometimes God points us in a certain direction by having us hone in on a particular concept. And one way He does that is by repetition. 

Earlier this week, my son was asking about what a yoke was (and what it meant to be yoked). My wife took the opportunity to answer those questions and then tied it all into being yoked with Jesus Christ.

Then as I was reading a couple of talks a few days ago from this recent General Conference, both of them referenced the scripture in Matthew 11:30 "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Then, today's Spoken Word on the broadcast ended with these words: "By inviting us to join Him in His yoke, the Lord is not promising to make our burdens disappear. Instead, He offers to carry them with us—to heal us in our heartache, to comfort us in our sorrow. None of us is as strong as we’d like to be. We need help from Someone greater than us all. When our journey makes us weary, He can help us find what we’ve been searching for—rest in Him."

As I pondered this concept of being yoked with Christ, I realized that I sometimes toss the yoke option aside and just want to carry my burdens without His help or involvement. As a fellow "pilgrim on a sea of strife, oft wounded, lost and weak" (from "May We Be More Like Thee" on today's broadcast), I'm not sure why I sometimes decline divine assistance. But I do. Maybe it's because I think I have enough strength. Maybe it's because I feel like the support I get from my family and friends is sufficient. Or maybe it's because my faith sometimes reaches a low point and I feel like the yoke is too hard to find, let alone put on. But I guess I'm re-realizing that if Christ is a true friend who loves me and is always eager to help me, it makes very little sense to turn down that love and assistance.  Accepting it will only help. It will only make each day a little easier and a little brighter. And who wouldn't want that?

At any rate, today's "Choir experience" was a good one. I enjoyed the songs, was able to get the words to one I was working hard on over the weekend ("Give Glory to His Honored Name"), and was able to talk to several friends whom I'm grateful for. 

As for Choir "news", I supposed the biggest news came on Thursday when we were told that we would indeed be having a Christmas Concert, but that it was going to be more of a Christmas "taping session". Audience members would be severely limited each night (no available public tickets) and it would mainly be something that everyone will get to see NEXT year. Our Christmas concerts are normally broadcast a year later, but the fact that the Conference Center wouldn't be filled to see it, certainly makes this year's concert unique. You can find out all about this year's concert (including the special guests) as well as how to watch our "20 Years of Christmas" video special--which will be broadcast on numerous stations at various time in December--by clicking HERE.

Until next time, God be with you.

TCATS #408 - Christmas Best

Today's post will be brief as I didn't attend choir rehearsal on Thursday or the Music & the Spoken Word broadcast today. I wanted to be at home for my dear wife who was experiencing some post Covid-booster shot health issues (which thankfully are subsiding) and I struggle sometimes when the Choir dedicates a whole program to U.S.-centric holidays when one of our goals is to be more aware of our global audience. That said, I know the Choir is famous, in part, for how well it performs patriotic music. And I'm certainly nothing but grateful for our U.S. veterans (and veterans from other countries) who not only gave much for the price of freedom, but in some cases, continue to struggle with afflictions and/or side-effects from the nature of their service. 

Switching topics....

I'm one of those people who prefers not to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. But I know there are many people out there who love to start listening to it as early as possible. Regardless of which camp you fall into, there are some new Tabernacle Choir Christmas listening and viewing options you should be aware of (for either now or later). 

First, there's the "Christmas Best" album that contains 13 songs from past Christmas concerts that the Choir has done. Then there's a video presentation as well. The Choir's website has the following description for the video: "This unique video recording is a must-have selection for everyone who loves Christmas. With two decades of Christmas performances by over 40 world-renowned individual artists and excerpts from over 60 songs, carols, and stories from around the world, this unique video recording is a must-have selection for everyone who loves Christmas."

I'm really excited about this Christmas album and video presentation and am eager for you to check them out. 

How do you do that exactly? 

Well, for the album, you can go the old-school route and purchase a CD. OR, you can stream the new album via Spotify or Apple Music. 

For the video, it looks like the only purchase option right now is a DVD, unfortunately. Hopefully a higher-quality version will be forthcoming (I'll certainly let you know). 

And that is it, my friends. Make this next week a really great one!

And until next time, God be with you.

TCATS #407 - Moving a Mountain

After the success of last week's "debut" broadcast and the many accolades the Choir, Bells, and Orchestra received (see YouTube chat comments at end of this post), our music directors were just a tad nervous that the broadcast today wouldn't measure up. But, both Mack and Ryan expressed how well it went and thanked us all for our hard work. As mentioned before, one of the goals (now that we're back singing again) is to do more songs by memory so that people watching us can see our eyes and faces more. Last week's broadcast was all memorized and this week, we had four of the five songs sung by memory. Thank goodness for that teleprompter though, which comes in handy from time to time. 

There are so many thoughts I could share about each one of the songs we sang today. But in short, one of the ones we sang was called "Anyone Can Move a Mountain." In all honesty, this was my least favorite of the five in terms of style (it reminded me of something you'd hear from the 50s or 60s on the Lawrence Welk Show--no offense to those who like this style!). That said, I was glad we sang it if only for the opportunity to ponder the lyrics themselves. The fact is, each of us is going through something hard and I think that at some point in our lives, we've all wished we could move the "mountain" in front of us. And while the lyrics of the song attest to the fact that we CAN move the mountain, I like to think of that "moving" as rather "conquering". It might be a bad habit or living with a health challenge or mending a relationship or simply getting up each morning to go work at a job we don't really enjoy. Whatever our mountain is, we can (as Lloyd Newell said in his spoken word today) try to conquer it through hard work. We can also rely on the support and love of others. And we can rely on our Savior as well. Conquering it or moving it doesn't mean it will entirely go away. We might have to live under the mountain's shadow for a time. But as long as we're trying. There's something to be said about effort.

OK. Well, a few other tidbits about today:

*Bishop Caussé said that after a meeting he had with various church leaders this past week, President Nelson asked him to stay so he (Pres. Nelson) could give him some feedback on the Choir. Basically, Pres. Nelson said that he really enjoyed watching and listening to the broadcast last week and wanted to Choir to know how much he loved it. That was nice to hear.

*We started learning Christmas music for future broadcasts, for the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and for the Christmas Concert. Most of the songs we started learning were not of the traditional Christmas sort but the fact we've started is significant. I'm not sure what the Christmas Concert will entail this year--they haven't said much about it. We don't even know if there will be some sort of guest artist since no artist was announced earlier this year as is tradition. But I'm sure whatever it is, it will be great. 

*I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that David and Deb Gehris were released as the seating managers. Well, today was their official last day and we sang "God Be With You" at the end of the broadcast, to them. They were teary-eyed. They both had sung in the choir for 20 years and then were seating managers for 15 after that. So...a lot of time invested. While I was sometimes critical of how David did his job, I recognize it was not an easy one and that he and Deb spent countless hours helping us all look good and organized in the choir loft. So thanks to you both! And good luck with the next door that opens for you.

*We've started covid-testing ourselves. Meaning, each of us performs our own test instead of having someone on the medical committee do it. It's actually not too difficult so this change was a good one as it frees up committee members who were having to come extra early (even earlier than the rest of us). And I'm sure it speeds things up overall.

Until next time, God be with you. 

-------------------

YouTube chat comments from last week's broadcast:

• Ok... good grief... where are my tissues??? ☺
• I am so grateful for each of them doing what they needed to do to sing together again.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
• Me siento muy agradecida con mi Padre Celestial por ver de nuevo al coro del Tabernaculo,
cantar en vivo y oirlos cantar en español, esto es muy especial para
• It is truly absolutely beautiful!!!
• This song is amazing! Thank you for a song in Spanish. Estoy tan agradecido!
• Bella música! Coro del Tabernáculo.
• What an incredible way to begin a Sabbath morning:)
• WELCOME BACK TO THE TABERNACLE CHOIR AND SPOKEN WORD THAT THE WHOLE
WORLD NEEDS TODAY, WORDS OF ADVICE TO HELP EACH ONE OF US. THANKS SO MUCH!!!
• I’m crying with that song in Spanish e ingles!!
• Another beautiful arrangement. Their Spanish was pretty good too!
• So missed this
• Love it! thank you
• Welcome back tabernacle choir at temple square
• Goodness, could this be more glorious?!
• I love this violin ostinato.
• Praise and Thanksgiving performed by Richard Elliott amazingly played
• Wow! This is just GLORIOUS!!!
• Isn't it amazing! This global praise through glorious voices!
• It is such a great blessing to see this Lord's choir after the pandemic.
• What a powerful performance. God is great!!!
• The Bells!
• Wow!! This is absolutely Wonderful!!
• Yes!! Miracles have never ceased
• Amen and Hallelujah!!
• Oh! the words displayed on screen and seeing the choir all present and signing together! A
wonderful blessing! Thank you, choir and all involved for all your hard work! We love you!
• This is enough to make us all weep for joy
• What a way to return to live broadcast.
• Just what my heart needed this morning

TCATS #406 - 20 Months Later. . .MSW Resumes

It's true that the Choir's official return from the pandemic hiatus was a few weeks ago when we performed at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' annual general conference. But since general conference is viewed mostly by members of the Church, today's Music & the Spoken Word  broadcast was truly significant because it was the first time that fans, viewers and listeners around the world (who, of course, consist of people of all walks of life), were able to experience a live broadcast. 

Today's broadcast was also significant because of the many enhancements it included, all of which are highlighted in the Choir's official blog (HERE).  In short though, the enhancements included a new opening sequence, a new logo, a new arrangement of "Gently Raise", and the inclusion of more on-screen information for each song performed. 

Also today, we performed three new songs, one newly arranged song, and two Choir favorites. The last song performed, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" was the last song the Choir sang back in March 2020 before the Choir had to go into "pause mode". So it was nice to end with that one, again. 

So how did I personally feel about the whole experience? 

Some thoughts: 

*Overall, I enjoyed it. And there were a few moments when I felt that tingly, uplifting feeling wash over me which was intertwined with hope and gratitude. 

*While I was appreciative of each song we sang, especially the new one I wrote about last week, it was nice to include a Spanish song --"Tuya es la Gloria (To Thee Be the Glory)"--as I've always thought that we should do more songs that our brothers and sisters in other countries can especially appreciate.

*It was nice to have Lloyd Newell address the choir before the broadcast started. I think he articulated what we were all feeling: we had taken a long break and that break was difficult. But being back together again, it was strange to feel that in some regards, it was like we never had the break at all. 

*We all missed the energy that a live audience contributes to the overall broadcast experience. That was most notable at the end when we normally sing "God Be With You" to all those in attendance. With no audience today, we didn't end with that song.

*I was grateful for a little experience I had while I was standing in the make-up line before the broadcast started. The individuals both in front of me and behind me were both "new" to the Choir (meaning they had made it into the choir in 2020) and it was fun to get to know them a little bit and hear about their excitement to sing on their very first Music & the Spoken Word broadcast. It brought back a few memories...

With this broadcast behind us, the Choir train has entered familiar territory again. While the journey it took us all on during the past 20 months was a strange one invoking emotions all across the spectrum, I'm glad the scenery, the train's speed, and the terrain are all back to "normal". 

Well, almost. (as soon we ditch the covid protocols, THEN we'll be back to normal)

Until next time, God be with you.