Every year at Christmas time, the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (formerly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) with the Orchestra and Bells at Temple Square invite some friends over for an evening of music, spoken word and perhaps a few surprises along the way.
While the choir has had Christmas programs of various sorts through the years, the current form came about in the year 2000 with special guest Gladys Knight. The following year, with Angela Landsbury, was the first to be recorded. It was also the first to be performed in the newly-built Conference Center and could take advantage of its 21,000 seating capacity and state of the art facilites. Each year since, with the exception of 2020, there has been a new concert, each with its own guest, its own theme and usually a special narration.
The concerts themselves take place over a three day period, from Thursday to Saturday, with one additional session strictly for recording and the guests usually sticking around for the Choir's Sunday morning Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. The video will be edited using footage from the concerts and the recording session and then released for purchase the following year as well as a broadcast on PBS.
Concerts, guests and the years they appeared
- 2001: "The Joy of Christmas"; Angela Lansbury
- 2002: "Silent Night, Holy Night"; Walter Cronkite
- 2003: "Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Vol. I"; Frederica von Stade and Bryn Terfel
- 2004: "Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Vol. II"; Audra McDonald and Peter Graves
- 2005: "Christmas With the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Vol. III"; Renee Fleming and Claire Bloom
- 2006: "Spirit of the Season"; Sissel Kyrkjebø
- 2007: "Rejoice and Be Merry"; The King's Singers
- 2008: "Ring Christmas Bells"; Brian Stokes Mitchell and Edward Herrmann
- 2009: "Most Wonderful Time of the Year"; Natalie Cole and David McCullough
- 2010: "Glad Christmas Tidings"; David Archuleta and Michael York
- 2011: "Once Upon a Christmas"; Jane Seymour (Actress) and Nathan Gunn
- 2012: "Home for the Holidays"; Alfie Boe and Tom Brokaw
- 2013: "Let the Season In"; Deborah Voigt and John Rhys-Davies
- 2014: "Keep Christmas With You"; Santino Fontana and the muppets of Sesame Street
- 2015: "Hallelujah!"; Laura Osnes and Martin Jarvis
- 2016: "Come Little Children"; Rolando Villazón
- 2017: "A Merry Little Christmas"; Sutton Foster and Hugh Bonneville
- 2018: "Angels Among Us"; Kristin Chenoweth
- 2019: "Christmas Day in the Morning"; Kelli O'Hara and Richard Thomas
- 2020: No concert, but the Choir produced a special to mark
20 years of the concert - 2021: "O Holy Night"; Megan Hilty and Neal McDonough
- 2022: "Light the World"; Lea Salonga and David Suchet
The format is unique to each concert, but elements usually include:
- A processional
- A selection of traditional songs or other staples
- The guest star will perform several numbers, usually including a
Signature Song or two, whether related to Christmas or not - The second guest (if there is one) will present a Christmas-related story with the Choir providing musical accompanyment
- An organ solo by lead organist Richard Elliot
- An orchestral piece
- A dance or ballet performance (usually provided by the University of Utah or Brigham Young University dance departments)
- The concert will conclude with a reading of the second chapter of Luke and the Choir singing "Angels From the Realms of Glory".
Examples
- Anti-Christmas Song: Deborah Voight sings "The 12 Days After Christmas", which has the "true love" disposing of all the gifts she was given each day (except one of the drummers).
- Audience Participation: To varying degrees depending on the year and the guests. Special mention goes to Kristin Chenoweth who is introduced not by walking on stage but as she strolls around the auditorium greetings audience members as she goes.
- The 2017 and 2018 concerts each had a sing-along number.
- The concerts traditionally conclude with the choir and audience joining in an encore of "Angels From the Realms of Glory".
- Avian Flute: "The Friendly Beasts" (arr. Mack Wilberg) has a chirping piccolo after the verse about the "dove from the rafters high".
- Brick Joke: Kristin Chenoweth tells a story about how when she was a kid she was part of a bell choir and really wanted to use one of the big bells (which were almost as big as she was at the time) but she kept getting stuck with the smallest bells. Later, while Richard Elliot is performing a rendition of "Carol of the Bells" with members of the bell choir, Kristin reappears with one of those large bells she always wanted to use.
- Christmas Songs: This goes without saying, though a few non-Christmas songs do work their way in as well.
- Comically Missing the Point: As the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Charles Dickens over the city to let him see things as they truly are, he looks and sees houses, hundreds of houses, filled with people...buying books!Ghost of Christmas Present: No, it's not about books!
- Death of a Child:
- "A Christmas Bell For Anya" ends with eight-year-old Anya dying when a mob/army roaming turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russia storms through her village.
- "It is Well With My Soul" deals with the writer of that song and the tragedies his family experienced, most notably the loss of all four of his daughters during the sinking of the SS Ville du Havre
.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first few concerts are fairly spartan in setup and lack many of the elements that are introduced in later years. In addition the editing is more obvious and they have a rather different feel.
- The Christmas story in Luke 2 is usually read up to verse 14 ("Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men") which leads into "Angels From the Realms of Glory", but the one read by Angela Landsbury went up to verse 19 ("But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart") and then had a short narration before the final number.
- Ethereal Choir: The 2006 concert has five ballet dancers performing while the choir sings Eric Whitacre's "Lux Aurumque".
- Failed a Spot Check: In "Keep Christmas With You", Big Bird strolls out to wish Mack "good luck" before the concert, not noticing the already full to capacity auditorium. Later, Grover is trying to figure out why he can't get an image on his monitor, only for Cookie Monster to point out it's a microwave.
- Good Samaritan: Kristin Chenoweth tells a story about how when she took a shortcut home from school one day she got lost until a kind old woman took her by the hand and led her right to her door. This serves as an introduction to "Angels Among Us".
- Holiday Ceasefire: The Walter Cronkite concert had him narrating the story of the most famous one, the 1914 Christmas truce during World War I.
- Holy Pipe Organ: Yes, it is an organ and it is in a religious building, but there are instances where they specifically invoke this.
- "American Christmas Memories" portrays the Christmas church service Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt spent together in the dark days of December 1941 with the choir singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem", which Churchill had never heard before, with just the organ.
- "Sing Choirs of Angels" has the choir singing "Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah" accompanied mainly by organ as a representative of the hymns brought by Welsh pioneers to Utah.
- Large Ham: Some guests just decide they want to have some fun and put on a show for all they're worth.
- Bryn Terfel came with the flag of Wales sewn into the inside of his coat. After showing the audience, he turned to show the choir and orchestra.
- Brian Stokes Mitchell half-acts out a lot of his songs, especially "The Friendly Beasts" where he sings with different voices for the different animals, even moving his jaw like a cow chewing its cud during that verse.
- John Rhys-Davies really gets into his role as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Especially when they start flying. "Wheeee!"
- Kristin Chenoweth hams her way through her entire concert, with a few instances where she's more serious. Otherwise she's posing dramatically as she sings, dancing around the set and bantering with Mack and the other performers.
- During the sing-along in the 2017 concert, a shot focuses on a group of kids who start hamming it up when they see the camera on them.
- Luminescent Blush: Kristin Chenoweth says it's one of her goals to get Mack to blush. She succeeds; his entire face turns bright red.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: The organ segment in "Keep Christmas With You" has Richard Elliot performing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with (who else) Count von Count narrating. When they get to day eleven, instead of recorders or clarinets they decide it means the organ pipes and begin a rendition of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" in a manner that might make one think it's actually Halloween instead of Christmas.
- Serial Escalation: From relatively straight forward concerts to full-on productions as time went on.
- Song of Prayer: Naturally a few of the carols and hymns fall into this category, but Alfie Boe also sang "Bring Him Home" from Les Misérables. In the backstage interview he notes that the cue in the play calls it "The Prayer", which is how he approaches it during performances.
- Special Guest: One of the main draws of the concerts, a new guest(s) each year.
- Yet Another Christmas Carol: In a vein similar to The Man Who Invented Christmas, John Rhys-Davies' narration portrays Charles Dickens in the role of Scrooge while writing that very story.
