Look carefully. This ticket is to the first performance on Thursday and in the Tabernacle, and it didn't come easy. On Thursday after a temple session in the Salt Lake Temple and with Evie working diligently in the Family History Library, and being retired and not otherwise occupied, I decided to take a chance in the standby line that forms at the flag pole on Temple Square. It was almost 6 PM and things weren't looking too hopeful. Then a choir member (all dressed up in his tuxedo) came by with 5 tickets and at that time I happened to be number 5 in line. (I had earlier got a ticket from a lady walking by the, but gave it away to a very nice lady visiting Salt Lake from Minnesota so she and her husband could both attend - sort of a "casting bread upon the waters" story.)
Hearing the performance live in the tabernacle was the special kicker for me (you can always buy the Choir's new CD). A performance in the Tabernacle, with its amazing acoustics, is one of the rare, truly "unplugged" musical experiences. There are no speakers or amplifiers or a sound engineer sitting at sound board mixing, modulating, filtering, equalizing and otherwise managing and enhancing the electrons that will come out of the speakers as sound into our ears. Rather, what you hear are the raw vibrations coming directly out of the singer's mouth or the organ pipes or off the violin strings and, after mixing with the other sounds in the rare acoustics of the building, hitting your ear drums. I'm not such a discriminating listener that I suspect in many cases I probably really couldn't tell the difference between this "purely natural" sound and the "electronic" sounds coming out of speakers, but I still revel in the thought of it.
There are, of course, plenty of rock concerts where the sound is loud - so loud you can feel the vibrations, but that is not the Tabernacle Choir/Tabernacle experience. Nonetheless, when the 360 nearly perfect pitch, well trained, disciplined and controlled voices of the choir open up on the Hallelujah chorus, backed by a full orchestra with brass and a timpani and the tabernacle organ and with all those sounds swirled around by the acoustics of that building, it is by no means screeching rock concert loud, but you really not only hear, but feel, the sound. It was marvelous. What was even more remarkable was how beautifully quiet that all those 360 voices could be, even the sopranos singing very high notes, e.g., the opening of "Since by Man Came Death."
Here are a couple of pictures, just to document that I was in fact there (there are a lot of better pictures of the choir and tabernacle).
Note, the orchestra included a harpsichord and some sort of small, baroque like era organ (along with the main tabernacle organ). Mack Wilberg, the choir director, actually re-orchestrated the entire score to more closely correspond to what Handel originally intended, but while also utilizing a large choir and orchestra. see Mack Wilberg-Messiah
This includes the soloists - all New York Metropolitan Opera level singers and there were all very good. The Soprano - Erin Morley (in black and white dress on the far left if you were looking at them from the audience) is not only a famous opera signer, but also a Mormon originally from the Salt Lake area. Her mother plays a violin in the orchestra and her father at one time sang in the choir.
This is a picture of the orchestra tuning just before the performance. The arrow points to one of the two trumpets in the orchestra. This guy absolutely nailed the trumpet solo on "The Trumpet Shall Sound" - essentially a duet between the bass soloist and the trumpet with the violins playing in the background. I almost got tears listening to it. I listened to it again on the simulcast on Friday. It sounded much better live in the Tabernacle. So never underestimate what a pudgy, balding, short haired middle aged guy with lousy posture may be able pull off. The choir also did this number again on the Sunday "Music and the Spoken Word" Easter broadcast.
