MEXICO CITY, Mexico — When singer Adassa was onstage with The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and the Orchestra at Temple Square at the National Auditorium in Mexico City, “there was a moment where we felt like we were just one.”
The first night of the choir and orchestra’s free concert in Mexico City on June 17, the live audience seemed like they didn’t want to leave, applauding and calling for an additional encore after the two-hour concert. The second night, the audience applauded and chanted as the choir and orchestra filed off the stage.
Singers Adassa, Alex Melecio and radio host Mariano Osorio were the guest artists during the concert that included about 385 members of the volunteer choir and orchestra.
This tour to Mexico City is the first of a multiyear global tour centered on hope. The choir and orchestra performed three concerts — one at the Toluca Cathedral on June 15 and two at Mexico City’s National Auditorium on June 17-18. The concert on June 17 was streamed via YouTube.
It’s a tour with many firsts that choir leaders are calling a success with lessons learned to implement on future tours. As part of a pilot, the June 13-19 tour was a shorter one to fewer locations. It was also the first time a tour concert was offered for free and also streamed.
The last time the choir sang in Mexico was in 1972 at an Area General Conference in the National Auditorium.
“We were embraced by Mexico, and I believe that Mexico felt embraced by us,” Choir President Michael O. Leavitt said.
Performing with the choir, orchestra
“When you are standing in front of the choir, you feel like there’s angels behind you,” Adassa said. “I think it’s the closest thing that you can have of heaven on earth. … It’s so beautiful.”
Adassa, who voiced Dolores in Disney’s “Encanto,” sang “La Vide Es Un Carnaval” (or “Life is a Party”) and “Dos Oruguitas” (or “Two Caterpillars”) from “Encanto.”
The hardest part? Not crying.
As the concert continued, she sat in a chair just off the stage to watch instead of going back to her dressing room.
Osorio shared personal stories from his life of his father’s death and his wife’s battle with cancer. It was interspersed with Melecio singing the poignant “Color Esperanza” (or “Painting the Colors of Hope”).
And when Osorio during his story asked for people to turn on the lights on their phones and hold them up, Adassa said “It’s like you were in the middle of the stars, and we all were just feeling that moment. There was so much joy.”
Osorio said it was “beautiful” to share those experiences, especially as it was the first time he was able to have his children in the audience.
“The healing that I shared, that healing happened to me, too,” Osorio said in Spanish. “I felt lighter. I feel happier, and I am at peace. … So it’s a little miracle that has great value in my life.”
Osorio, who considers himself a friend of the Church, admired the perfection of the choir and their work ethic. “The closest I have seen to excellence in my 53 years of life is the work of the choir.”
Melecio called the feeling from the audience “electric.”
“Performing with the choir would be amazing, but for me to be able to be here was magical,” Melecio said, adding in the orchestra and working with Osorio. “I don’t have any other way to describe it.”
During the concert, the three members of the choir who were from Mexico were recognized — Hirepan Zarco, Dámaris Zarco, and Alberto Treviño Flores.
“As soon as I mentioned the names of the members of the choir were from here, that was one of the loudest ovations of the night,” Melecio said.
“The reaction of ‘Oh my goodness, we have people to represent us with this amazing choir.’ It’s a huge deal,” Melecio said. “People were grateful to see the choir and everything else was cherries on top. … The cultural elements just added to the celebratory aspect.”
Several of the songs the choir sang were in Spanish, including the popular “Cielito Lindo.”
“We’re celebrating people, a culture, a nation that knows how to have hope and knows how to love,” Melecio said.
When Adassa heard the choir was going to Mexico on tour, she was excited — her husband was born in Monterrey and served a mission in Mexico City. Her schedule was booked through February 2024 when she was approached through her management team if she would be willing to sing in the concerts at the National Auditorium.
Her reaction? “We’ve got to do this.”
“I can’t imagine being invited to be a part of this moment and just lend my voice to an experience that so many people will not forget and I hope it’s the first of many more,” she said.
The choir presidency felt the excitement in the audience’s reaction.
“I felt the Spirit. I felt joy. I felt hope and I think everyone else in the audience did as well,” said President L. Whitney Clayton, first counselor in the choir presidency. He added: “The energy was as high as I’ve ever felt anywhere. It was just wonderful. It was a lot of good people in a great big room, concentrating on the same thing, feeling the same things and just united in heart and soul.”
The concert’s message of faith and hope came through, Clayton said. “Jesus Christ is the center of faith and the center of hope.”
Music with hope and joy
For Mack Wilberg, music director of The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, “The audience could not have been more enthusiastic.”
“Because we perform so much in the Conference Center, we’re used to large audiences. But there was … a special energy and electricity last evening,” Wilberg said of the Saturday concert. “We really felt like we were so welcome, and they appreciated so much our being here.”
The program included “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” in English and Spanish, followed by “Come, Ye Children of the Lord” in Spanish and “Alabaré a mi Señor” (“I Will Praise My Lord”) in Spanish. Celebratory “¡Ah, El Novio!” a Sephardic wedding song, and the Nigerian carol “Betelehemu,” both sung in those native languages. The choir and orchestra then performed a trio of songs in English about being in love: “Music Everywhere,” the softer “We Shall Gather at the River” and the upbeat “Cindy.”
Organist Richard Elliott then played Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” Next were performances of “Let Us All Press On” and “The Spirit of God” followed by three encores — “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Cielito Lindo” and “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”
Putting together a program, whether in English or Spanish or any language, “I always say you need to have contrast and unity,” Wilberg said.
Contrast in the music so that everything doesn’t sound the same, Wilberg said. “One thing that’s been helpful in a cohesive program is our theme of hope. And with hope comes joy. And so those two elements made putting the program a joy to put together.”
Standing on the podium in the nearly 10,000-seat National Auditorium, Wilberg said, “You could have heard the pin drop” during Osorio’s message and story of hope. “You could tell the audience was completely with him.”
The veteran music director continued: “Because if the audience isn’t with you, you hear rustling, you hear coughing. I didn’t hear a cough the entire time … he was doing his presentation.”
The National Auditorium has the largest organ in Latin America. As each organ like this is custom built, they took time to “meet the organ.”
“It was fun to use it,” said Brian Mathias, who was one of the three organists with Eliott and Andrew Unsworth on the tour. Unsworth flew to Mexico City earlier this year to try it out and they have worked with the technicians since then.
And they always prefer to use an organ at a location, if possible, rather than their traveling one.
“The amazing warmth and love is something that we won’t soon forget,” Mathias added of the concert.
On Sundays for the weekly “Music & the Spoken Word” program, the audience is invited to be quiet for the broadcast’s recording session. With the audiences’ enthusiasm — thundering applause, cheers, chants and waving their lit phones — created an energetic atmosphere.
In the orchestra, violinists Becky Fulmer and Emily Rice are where the sounds of the choir and the audience’s reactions come together. Both Fulmer and Rice have been on multiple tours and said the audience’s reaction was one of the best they’ve felt.
“We felt so loved,” Fulmer said of the audience’s reaction.
For Rice, she notices how “there is a sizzle in the air when you are there in-person.”
Alto MaryKatherine Farnsworth is on her first tour with the choir. “This felt so much more personal,” she said of the connection with the audience. “We were blessed by them.”
It’s a second tour for Jo Grant, who also sings alto. Even though it was extra work to learn the lyrics in Spanish, she was grateful they did, and she said the audience’s reaction was worth the effort.
“The genuine reaction [of the audience] was overwhelming.” She added that she could feel the Spirit in the concert hall.
Pilot tour’s successes
“I think we’ve accomplished the mission that we set forward prior to coming,” President Leavitt said. There were three goals in coming to Mexico City on tour, President Leavitt said.
First, was to open the choir and orchestra’s world tour.
“Over the next four years, we’ll go around the world with a message of hope and the context of our testifying of Jesus Christ,” Leavitt said.
Next, was the goal to share a sense of belonging to a worldwide church in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“The second objective was to give the people of Mexico, and all of the places where we tour, a sense of belonging — they belong to a worldwide church. And it’s important that they see and feel part of that,” Leavitt said.
Third was to make additional friends for the Church in Mexico. “There were many guests from many sectors from all across Mexico, who in fact, will be our friends,” Leavitt said.
In addition to the audience of nearly 10,000 people each night in the National Auditorium, the concert was streamed to more than 250 locations, including stake centers, throughout Mexico. Their goal was to reach 100,000 people, Leavitt said. “I think we’ve clearly exceeded that.” And he expects that number to climb.
“This truly was a national program,” Leavitt said. “We don’t yet know the breadth of how dispersed the message will be, but we think it’s big and we think it will have a profound impact on the mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico.”
And the online audience continues to grow. The stream on the Tabernacle Choir’s YouTube channel had more than 13,000 viewers watching it live. By Tuesday, June 20, there have been more than 150,000 views on the videos on the Tabernacle Choir’s English and Spanish YouTube channels.
What they’ve learned from this tour will be implemented on future tours.
“We need to be better at this because we’re going to a lot of places, and we’re going with frequency. And we’re going to places that are more demanding to travel to than other places in the world where the choir has historically traveled,” Leavitt said.
President Leavitt noticed the crowds lining up outside the entrance to the National Auditorium, before they opened two hours before the concert.
He along with a colleague went out to talk to them. “They wanted to tell me how important it was to them for the Tabernacle Choir to come to Mexico.”
Health challenges
“When one travels outside the United States for the first time in a while, sometimes you have disruptions, you get sick. Some of our colleagues did, but they were steadfast in their devotion,” Leavitt said.
What he was most impressed with was how other choir and orchestra members helped minister to the needs of those who were sick, including by helping them find medicine, bringing them food, keeping them company and helping to minimize their discomfort.
“It was done spontaneously between people who care about each other,” he said.
Periodic wellness checks were also implemented to make sure that everyone who needed help received it.
President Clayton said, “They’ve done their best under difficult circumstances. ... But in the meantime, the message of discipleship has just been marvelous people pulling through when they had to.”
In the orchestra, there are several sections where there are multiple instruments where having a person out can be covered. But there are some parts where it’s only one person on a part, and “that becomes a challenge,” Wilberg said. Sixty-six members of the 110-piece orchestra were on the tour.
“We actually had to fly in someone [Saturday] to take the place of one of our performers, who was unable to perform,” Wilberg said. The performer and his instrument managed to make it to the auditorium just a couple hours before the performance began.
Free tickets and a 15-ton donation
In planning for the concert, they didn’t want to have to make people pay for the tickets, President Gary B. Porter, second counselor in the choir presidency, said. They wondered about having people bring food to donate for the humanitarian effort.
“As we thought about that, it would be nice for them just to come and enjoy this as a gift,” President Porter said. Working with the Mexico Area presidency, they identified local refugee shelters that they could donate to.
President Porter with Elder Hugo Montoya, General Authority Seventy and the Mexico Area president, on Friday, June 16, formally presented Movilidad Humana with the 15 tons of food for the migrant centers they operate.
“This concert ... was an outright, freewill offering of the choir and the mutual effort of the [Mexico] Area presidency to provide something that would be free to the people — they could just come and enjoy and have that as a gift to them,” President Porter said. “This 15 tons of food are beans, and the lentils and rice were given to a refugee group here that they were able to feed their people for a couple of months.”
Interfaith concert
The concert at the Toluca Cathedral on Thursday, June 15, was the result of an interfaith effort and relationships.
In the state of Mexico where the city of Toluca is, there is a strong interfaith council, President Clayton said, including the Catholic Church and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“They worked together well already and we wanted to emphasize that and to provide something that would bring them together very positively,” President Clayton said.
President Leavitt sat next to Archbishop Raul Gomez Gonzalez during a dinner prior to the concert and they talked about their families, the love of music and things they liked to do. “We realized we have a lot in common.”
Hearing the choir and orchestra
Ernesto Maldonado Diaz, 72, of Naucalplan, listens to the Tabernacle Choir just about every day on YouTube. He’s always wanted to hear them live.
“It was heavenly to listen to. It was wonderful,” he said with excitement and emotion after the concert on Sunday.
Cecy Gastelum knew Melecio and his family when he was young and was Melecio's seminary teacher before he moved. In her seminary class, he didn’t stay still and was always moving.
“This is a result of pursuing your dreams,” she said of Melecio’s performance. She thought the concert was excellent.
Carlos Sanchez and Mariana Ayala of Toluca brought their two older children, 9-year-old Carlos and 14-year-old Karen, on Sunday night — a first for the four of them in the National Auditorium.
“It was so beautiful,” said Ayala. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life.”
The message of love and hope touched her mind and heart.
Carlos de Avila said he couldn’t find the words to express the happiness he felt after the concert, pausing as he got emotional.
“We were able to feel the Spirit,” he said.
For Margarita Torres Perez, she was very thankful to hear and “enjoy the angels in the choir.”
