The 2021 Heritage Tour by The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square has been postponed until 2022, the second time the European tour has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tour had been scheduled for June 17 through July 8 of this year. The 2022 performances will be in the same cities planned for the original tour — Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland; Copenhagen, Denmark; Oslo, Norway; Cardiff and Newport, Wales; and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Further information about 2022 revised dates and ticket information will be published in coming weeks, with patrons asked to not contact the concert venues until additional details become available.
The postponement was announced Friday morning, March 5, on Newsroom.
It means another year of waiting for European followers of the choir and orchestra — the Heritage Tour was announced in 2019 for the summer of 2020, only to have COVID-19 conditions cause a postponement of the tour first to 2021 and now to 2022.
Originally announced in May 2019 as the 2020 Heritage Tour with visits to the four Nordic nations as well as Scotland and Wales, the tour was to run June 25 through July 16, 2020, at the following venues:
- Konserthuset Stockholm in Stockholm, Sweden
- Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, Finland
- DR Koncerthuset in Copenhagen, Denmark
- In Oslo, Norway, at a venue yet to be announced
- St. David’s Hall in Cardiff, Wales (by invitation only)
- International Convention Centre Wales in Cardiff, Wales
- Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland
The performance at St. David’s Hall in Cardiff was announced as a benefit concert, with attendance by invitation only.
Several converts to the Church from these nations were pioneers of the choir, including John Parry, who was born in Wales in 1789 and became the first conductor of the Tabernacle Choir.
Pandemic precautions and restrictions didn’t just affect the European tour. Social distancing practices have forced the choir and orchestra to halt rehearsals and performances, with prerecorded performances used for the past two general conferences as well as the weekly “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcasts. Last year’s Pioneer Day and Christmas concerts were also canceled.
The choir and the orchestra last toured two years ago when they made stops at several cities along the United States’ Pacific Coast and in Vancouver, Canada, during their 2018 Classic Coast Tour.
