SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon Tabernacle Choir will conduct its 2007 Canada–Midwest United States tour from 21 June through 3 July 2007. It will perform concerts in Toronto, Canada; Chautauqua, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee. Sixty-five members of the Orchestra at Temple Square will accompany the 360-voice choir on tour.
Music performed on the summer tour will draw from the choir’s extensive repertoire and will include choral masterworks, hymns, spirituals, and folk songs. Craig Jessop, music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, said: “We look forward to bringing the choir and orchestra to these great music festivals and venues. Our repertoire will include works from the masters of classical composition to famed Broadway tunes, and there should be something to please everyone who attends.” The concert program will also feature selections from the choir’s spring 2007 CD release entitled Showtime! Music from Broadway and Hollywood.
The choir and orchestra will give matinee and evening performances at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on 22 June, followed by matinee and evening performances at the Chautauqua Amphitheater on 23 June. The choir will perform at three prestigious outdoor summer venues beginning with the Blossom Festival in Cleveland on 25 June, followed by the Ravinia Music Festival in Chicago on 27 June, and an appearance at the Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati with the Cincinnati Pops (Erich Kunzel and Craig Jessop sharing the conducting duties) on 29 June. The tour will conclude with shows at two large Tennessee venues: the Gaylord Entertainment Center in Nashville on 30 June and the FedEx Forum in Memphis on 2 July.
The tour will mark a return to Chicago, the site of the choir’s first tour outside of Utah at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, as well as first-ever visits to Cincinnati and Memphis. Since that first Chicago appearance, the choir has toured extensively across the United States and abroad. It has performed throughout Europe and in music capitals from Israel and Russia to Japan and Australia. Its travels have also included performances at the inaugurations of six U.S. presidents. The all-volunteer, 360-voice choir, accompanied frequently by the similarly all-volunteer orchestra, can also be heard weekly as part of the Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. This 30-minute program, which celebrated its 4,000th weekly broadcast in April of this year, is the world’s longest continuously running network broadcast. It currently airs on over 2,000 radio, TV, cable and satellite stations worldwide.
Tickets for the 2007 concerts, except for the performances in Chautauqua, will go on sale by 15 December 2006 at all concert venues, through various online ticket agencies, over the phone and also online at www.mormontabernaclechoir.org.
Information on the venues and ticket sales on each of the tour stops is attached. For more information and additional media resources, please visit www.mormontabernaclechoir.org and click on “Newsroom.”