The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square officially announced their 2011 summer tour will be from 20 June through 27 June 2011. The tour will consist of seven concerts with performances in five different cities: Norfolk, Virginia; Washington D.C.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chautauqua, New York; and Toronto, Canada. Sixty-five members of the Orchestra at Temple Square will accompany the 360-voice choir on tour.
Tickets for the concerts are now available with the exception of the concerts at the Chautauqua Institution, where tickets go on sale on 14 February 2011. More specific information on dates, venues and tickets is included below and is also available on the choir’s website (mormontabernaclechoir.org) and on its Facebook page (facebook.com/mormontabernaclechoir).
“Every week we have thousands of visitors from all over the world who come to Salt Lake City to experience the choir in person,” says Mack Wilberg, music director of the choir. “Touring gives us the chance to share this experience with new audiences around the country. It’s a great privilege and a highlight for choir and orchestra members to perform for audiences in live concerts.”
The 2011 tour will begin on Monday, 20 June, with a concert in Norfolk, Virginia, at the Scope Arena, which will be part of the Virginia Arts Festival. The choir last performed in Virginia a decade ago while there for George W. Bush’s inauguration; however, this will be the choir’s first visit to Norfolk. The tour will then travel to Vienna, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., for a concert on Wednesday, 22 June, at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. Their next performance will be in the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, 23 June. The choir and orchestra last performed in both cities during their 2003 Eastern States tour.
The choir and orchestra will once again be the season-opening concert at the Chautauqua Institution for a matinee and an evening concert on Saturday, 25 June. The choir has opened the
Chautauqua season to sold-out performances two times before, in 2003 and 2007. The tour will conclude with another set of matinee and evening performances at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall on Monday, 27 June. The choir last performed in Toronto to rave reviews and sold-out houses in 2007.
Since its first tour outside of Utah in 1893, 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 choir and orchestra usually tour every other year since all of the performers must take vacation time from their jobs and families to undertake the travel.
The 360-voice choir, accompanied frequently by the 110-member orchestra, can also be heard weekly as part of the Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. This 30-minute program is the world’s longest continuously running network broadcast and currently airs on over 2,000 radio, TV, cable and satellite stations worldwide. The choir and orchestra are active recording artists with their own recording label, Mormon Tabernacle Choir®. Their latest release is Men of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a CD featuring music for men’s voices which has been number one on the BillboardClassical Traditional list for the past three weeks.
For more information and additional media resources, please visit www.mormontabernaclechoir.org and click on “Newsroom.” Media resources include these brief video clips of choir members speaking about what it’s like to go on tour: