Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles remembers, as a child through his early teenage years in Brazil, gathering around a large radio with other Church members on the floor of the commercial building the Church rented to listen to the session of general conference broadcast by a local radio station named Radio Mulher.
Listening to messages from leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also meant hearing The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
“I dreamed one day that I would listen to this choir in person,” said Elder Soares. Hearing conference on the radio meant occasional interruptions, getting the station tuned in just right and listening to an interpretation by someone who wasn’t a Church member.
“We kept reverently listening,” Elder Soares said. “When the choir would sing, it was just at a moment of peace and joy.”
And that opportunity came to hear the choir in person in May 1981 when, for the first time in its history, the Tabernacle Choir performed in São Paulo, Brazil. He had returned from serving a mission the year before and was dating Rosana Fernandes Morgado; the couple would marry the following year.
“We felt so blessed in Brazil to have that opportunity,” Elder Soares said of the concert.
Elder Soares recalled that he was impressed to hear the Tabernacle Choir sing in Portuguese. The 20-something Elder Soares also waited outside one of the concerts with many others to wave and cheer for the choir members as they left.
“It was very, very emotional, and everybody felt so good and so excited about that,” he said of the concerts. “And we were always wondering when the choir will come back to Brazil.”
The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square will return to São Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 23 to March 2, as the sixth stop on the “Songs of Hope” — “Canções de Esperança” in Portuguese — tour. The choir and orchestra will perform in Ginásio do Ibirapuera — the same venue where they performed in 1981. The concert on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 6 p.m. Brasília Standard Time, 2 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, will be streamed live on the Tabernacle Choir’s YouTube channel.
Elder Soares said it has been emotional to be assigned to go with the choir and orchestra on this travel assignment.
“I have an opportunity to accompany the choir in Brazil, in my own country,” he said. He accompanied the choir and orchestra on the tour stop in Lima, Peru, in February 2025.
In advance of the choir and orchestra’s upcoming tour stop, the Church News asked readers to share their experiences at 1981 concerts.
“It was a great, great moment for our country,” Elder Soares said of the 1981 concert and the growth of the Church in Brazil. He added, “The choir contributed to opening doors and opening hearts to show people that we were serious about our worship to our Savior, Jesus Christ.”
At the end of 2024, the most recent numbers available, more than 1.5 million members of the Church live in Brazil, attending nearly 2,100 wards and branches across the country.
The first temple in the country and in South America, the São Paulo Brazil Temple, was dedicated in 1978. Now, there are 24 temples in operation, under construction or in planning across the country: 11 operating temples, five under construction and eight in planning.
The choir in Brazil in 1981
The 1981 concert included two of the 350 choir members who were from Brazil — Lin de Paula and Wany Santos Thrikill — singing a duet in Portuguese and the choir singing the Brazilian national anthem in Portuguese, reported the Church News at the time.
“The choir’s performance was simply extraordinary,” recalled Marcelo Leite Silveira of the São Paulo Brazil Taboão Stake in a recent email to the Church News, noting several of the songs the choir sang and the national anthem.
“But it was the closing hymns, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ (‘Vencendo Vem Jesus’) and ‘Come, Come, Ye Saints’ (‘Vinde, Ó Santos’), that brought us to tears and left an unforgettable memory of this wonderful visit of the Tabernacle Choir to Brazil,” Silveira wrote.
Pedro Pereira dos Santos of the São Paulo Brazil Pirituba Stake was 17 years old in 1981 and had been a Church member for a year. He went with missionaries as they were inviting people to attend — including a Presbyterian congregation.
“For me, young and newly converted, it was a special experience to attend the Tabernacle Choir’s concert that day. It was a great experience,” he wrote. “Years later, in 2013, I was able to attend again in person at a general conference.”
Marina Talanskas was part of the five-member singing group Sal da Terra — Salt of the Earth in English — invited to sing for the Tabernacle Choir. The group performed songs rooted in Brazilian culture along with a selection of international songs, wrote Talanskas’ husband, Danilo Talanskas, of the São Paulo Brazil Ferreira Stake.
“The choir members’ warm feedback to Marina brought deep spiritual encouragement, especially because, in the weeks prior, we had been called to preside over the Brazil Rio de Janeiro Mission from 1981 to 1984,” he wrote.
Missionaries in Brazil
Missionaries could attend the concert if they brought friends who weren’t members of the Church.
Bill Loveless of Taylorsville, Utah, who was serving as a missionary, wrote how they invited many people to the concert and it was on the day before the concert that a family said they were willing to go. However, the next day, when they went to visit the family, they weren’t home.
Loveless and his companion made their way to the concert, consulting maps and asking for directions, plus making two bus transfers and crossing the busy highway next to the venue. They were 35 minutes late for the concert.
“The choir sang a few songs in Latin, one in Hebrew and several songs in English, but they thrilled everyone by singing a few in Portuguese,” he wrote.
Don Lambson, of Sandy, Utah, was a missionary in the Brazil São Paulo South Mission in 1981 and had studied graphic design. “I was asked to create a large welcome banner for the choir to post at the concert site,” he wrote.
“Most amazing to all present was to hear the choir sing the Brazilian national anthem in Portuguese,” he wrote.
