SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square will kick off the Pioneer Day weekend with a special commemorative concert on Friday evening, 21 July 2006. The Conference Center performance begins at 7:30 p.m. and is an official event of Salt Lake City's "Days of '47" celebration.
The Brett Family Singers will join the choir and orchestra for this special program. This talented Latter-day Saint family produces a popular variety show in Branson, Missouri, and has been featured on PBS.
The concert commemorates the 159th anniversary of the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint pioneer company in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Notably, this year’s program also marks the 150th anniversary of the first handcart companies to enter the valley in 1856.
This musical celebration is part of a series of events recognizing the sesquicentennial anniversary of the handcart experiment. President Gordon B. Hinckley paid tribute to the handcart pioneers during a recent visit to Iowa City, the place where handcart companies began their trek across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains.
The concert will be broadcast live over the Church satellite system to meetinghouses worldwide and on BYU Television on DISH Network and DirecTV. Live audio can be heard on BYU Radio on DISH Network, on KBYU-FM (89.1) and on the Internet at www.lds.org/broadcast.
KBYU-TV, channel 11, will provide a delayed broadcast of the event from 9:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Friday evening.
Archived audio and video versions of the concert will be available on the Internet after Wednesday, 26 July 2006, at www.lds.org/broadcast.