ATLANTA, Georgia — When Kevin Johnson, director of the Spelman College Glee Club, first heard of the Spelman and Morehouse college glee clubs going to Utah, he had questions.
“What are we doing? What? We’re going where in October?” Johnson recalled during a news event on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
The experiences “started with questions,” he said. By the time the Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra at Temple Square, the Spelman College Glee Club and the Morehouse College Glee Club had sang together in the Salt Lake Tabernacle for “Music & the Spoken Word” last October, the musical groups’ members had gotten to know each other.
“It ended in tears,” Johnson said of the tender emotions many felt as they each sang their farewell songs.
The groups sang together again on Monday, Sept. 9, at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College and will also perform together on Wednesday, Sept. 11, in State Farm Arena. The concerts are part of this stop of the choir and orchestra’s multiyear, multicity “Songs of Hope” tour. They previously performed a bilingual concert in southern Florida on Sept. 8.
Monday’s concert “was a ramp up from there,” Johnson added during the press event at the State Farm Arena, speaking about the concert and the groups’ performing together. The event included Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt, General Authority Seventy and counselor in the Church’s North America Southeast Area; Choir President Michael O. Leavitt; Tabernacle Choir music director Mack Wilberg; and David Morrow, music director of the Morehouse College Glee Club. In the arena, crews were setting up for the concert.
“What we see here is a powerful force,” said Elder Corbitt, adding that it can alleviate division“ and can send a spirit of peace and unity throughout the nation.
“I feel a power of unity and sisterhood and brotherhood that maybe the country hasn’t seen for a long time growing out of this collaboration.”
President Leavitt said: “It’s not just beautiful music. But it was historical in the context of friendships that are being developed and the feeling that existed among and between the choirs and the communities.”
As the concerts, which are free, are being livestreamed, groups have been organizing watch parties so more than those in the arenas and chapel are able to hear the choir sing.
The Rev. Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., the founding dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, suggested the groups could sing together in the spring of 2023 when President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints honored in April 2023 as the inaugural laureate of the Morehouse College’ Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize. At that time, the choir recorded selections to be sung at the ceremony, and leaders from both organizations talked about a possible collaboration.
President Leavitt said when the groups first started conversations about working together, there was some “historical skepticism,” but that it has melted away.
“And last night, in that auditorium, there was a spirit of not just reconciliation but of love, and everyone felt it.”
And it’s accomplishing the choir and orchestra’s purpose of “bringing a sense of peace and healing and unity,” he said.
Wilberg called it an honor to collaborate with “our great friends from Spelman and from Morehouse and to be with those beautiful young students who are so full of optimism and hope. I think that it was inspirational to all of us.”
The Tabernacle Choir director said that there was a “remarkable spirit of hope and unity in the room. And I think that there’s nothing like music to unify and bring people together if it’s used in the right way.”
Morrow added, “We are very proud to be with you and to be with our sister school Spelman and to create what is unity in music but unity beyond music. … At a time in the world where we needed to show love, this is how we do it.”
He said there was a change in the sound when everyone sang together that wasn’t expected.
“The change in the sound in the room, when everybody was performing the whole orchestra — all of the choirs together — that just had this momentous sound and occasion. That made all of the texts just come alive,” Morrow said.
Sheila Sconiers, who sings second soprano in the choir, had extended family and friends who live in the Atlanta area and came to the concert at Morehouse College.
Sconiers said she feels many of the threads in her life — including ones for the gospel, the Church, her Black heritage — have become knitted closer together.
“It feels like those identities [have] … become more one,” Sconiers said.
In Atlanta and in southern Florida, there’s been an electrical energy among the performers and audience members, Sconiers said.
“Everybody was so happy, and you could just build on that energy. We felt that energy, we felt that love, and we felt that excitement to move forward together,” she said.
Morehouse and Spelman College glee clubs
As the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square members were sitting in the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center for rehearsal on Monday morning, they cheered as the glee club members came in.
On Monday, between rehearsals, Simone Moales — a senior who has been in the Spelman College Glee Club for four years — said she and others who went to Salt Lake City last year had done research on the choir before they went.
“So when we got there, even with all those accolades, it still felt like family,” Moales said. And now being back together has been like a family reunion.
Madison Brown, a senior at Spelman College, said she’s been able to reconnect with several of the choir members she met last fall.
Where she was sitting onstage, “I had the choir behind me, and there were times where I was like, ‘You cannot cry. You’re onstage.’ It was so powerful to hear everyone.
“When I opened my mouth to sing, there was like a hundred other voices behind me as well,” she said.
For Ariana Swindell, a junior, the performances in Salt Lake City last fall came during mid-terms and a stressful time during the semester. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to go to Utah” as the time gave her a greater perspective.
Getting to know other choir members has helped her “realize I’m not as different as the world might try to say from you, and we don’t have to be divided.”
For Ava Challenger, who is a junior and one of the soloists, it was nice to be in the audience for part of the concert. Due to space, the glee club sat in the audience for part of the concert and then switched with several rows of choir members.
“Being able to watch the Tabernacle Chronic perform was beyond amazing and, especially with the orchestra, just the unbelievable music being made,” Challenger said.
Of the Spelman College Glee Club members, only about 20 of them were in Utah last year, So 40 of them, including incoming freshmen, learned the music in about three weeks. Usually their first performance is a Christmas concert later in the year.
“I was so proud of the leadership,” said Johnson of older, experienced choir members helping the freshmen get ready for the concert.
Robert Smith Jr., a senior who is the Morehouse College Glee Club president, said a key memory from being in Utah with the choir last fall was that everyone was so welcoming.
“Nobody from the choir, then or now, fails to tell us how much they love us, how much they love our music and how much they enjoy performing with us.”
Nathaniel Cangé, who is in his second year, said of singing with Tabernacle Choir: “The music that we were doing, … they were amazing because they sort of leveled out what this praise means to each and every one of us.”
The songs “Holy, Holy, Holy” and “What a Wonderful World,” “express the same idea with a completely different style.”
Both Smith and Cangé appreciated being able to get to know the Tabernacle Choir members individually, like at meals and other times.
“Everytime we come together, it’s magical,” Cangé said.
Smith said, “This experience is just so emotionally, spiritually, enriching for all of us, and I would love to honestly do it again.”
Elijah Gaitling, a junior at Morehouse College and a member of the club, said on Monday between rehearsals that it was a bit of a tear-jerker to hear everyone come together and sing.
“We are grateful for the excitement that everyone is displaying, for the love that everyone is showing, but also for the sense of peace that is roaming around our campuses,” Gaitling said. He also added his birthday wishes for President Nelson.
Of future performances, Morrow said, “I hope that this is a spark for others to do the same. I hope that we get a chance to do it again.”
‘Songs for the People’
There’s more than the combined performances from this friendship. The choirs premiered a new song titled “Songs for the People.”
The text for “Songs for the People” is a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an abolitionist, suffrage activist, poet and writer.
“This was clearly given to me to find that type,” Johnson said of the creation of the music. “I read the text and the melody followed shortly thereafter.”
And when the inspiration came — “this is not inspiration that you let go” — he wrote with what he had available, which was soap on the bathroom mirror.
“I knew that I was a conduit for something that God had given us,” Johnson said.
He approached the Tabernacle Choir staff to ask Wilberg, who Johnson described as “funky” in the best possible sense, if he would be willing to arrange it.
Wilberg took the piece and did an orchestral arrangement and included piano for four hands.
“That became sort of the nucleus for the entire piece,” Wilberg said. He added, “it was great to be able to collaborate with Johnson and be together on the same bench.”
And Morrow then directed all three choirs and the orchestra.
“How many choirs will sing that over the years? It’s powerful,” Johnson said.
About the ‘Songs of Hope’ world tour
The first concert of the southeastern U.S. tour stop was a bilingual Spanish/English concert in south Florida on Saturday, Sept. 7, with singers Adassa, known for her role as Dolores in “Encanto,” and Alex Melecio, one of the narrators for the Spanish “Music & the Spoken Word.”
The Morehouse and Spelman glee clubs will also be featured at the choir’s next concert at the State Farm Arena on Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 7 p.m. While that performance will have several of the same songs as the concert on Monday, Wilberg hinted at a few surprises.
The choir and orchestra will also perform in the Georgia state capitol building on Sept. 11 as part of a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of 9/11.
The concerts during the tour are being livestreamed on the choir’s YouTube channel, on broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org and on the Gospel Stream app, and the arena concerts will be available for on-demand viewing. (See www.choirworldtour.com for streaming information.) There are also watch parties across the southeastern U.S. to view the concerts live.
Church News’ coverage of the ‘Songs of Hope’ southeastern U.S. tour stops in Florida and Georgia
- Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra in Florida for first concert of southeastern U.S. ‘Songs of Hope’ tour stop
- Singer Adassa returns to southern Florida roots for Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra ‘Songs of Hope’ bilingual concert
- ‘Spectacular’: Tabernacle Choir and the Morehouse and Spelman colleges’ glee clubs combine together as they sing, testify of Savior through music
- Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform at the Georgia State Capitol
- Kristin Chenoweth surprise guest artist at Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra’s final tour concert in Georgia
- How to watch the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra’s concerts in Florida and Georgia
- See photos of watch parties across southeastern U.S. for Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra’s ‘Songs of Hope’ concerts
