The beloved annual “Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir” holiday special returns this December for its 20th televised year with Tony® Award-winning Disney and Broadway star Lea Salonga (“Mulan,” “Miss Saigon”) and world-renowned screen and stage actor Sir David Suchet (“Agatha Christie’s Poirot”).
The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square join with award winning artists Lea Salonga and Sir David Suchet for Season of Light: Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir, a festive and uplifting Christmas special. Filmed with a live audience, this concert will illuminate your holiday experience with timeless carols, treasured Christmas songs and a story of heroic service.
For the 90-minute special, Salonga joins The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in singing favorite holiday tunes as well as performing a World War II-era song in Tagalog, “Payapang Daigdig,” to honor her Filipina heritage.
Watch The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform "Rocking Carol", a traditional 1920's Czech carol that was made popular in 1965, when Julie Andrews popularized it on a Christmas album. This arrangement by Mack Wilberg was written especially for The Tabernacle Choir’s 'Season of Light' Christmas concert.
As the evening’s narrator, Suchet powerfully recounts the story of Sir Nicholas Winton, an English stockbroker who worked tirelessly in the months before World War II to save endangered Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, orchestrating the safe passage of 669 refugees, with a known posterity of 6,000.
Watch the spectacular opening to "Season of Light: Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir." This processional, "When the Shepherds Saw the Light" is based on an old Provençal noël, “Allons bergers, allons, tous.” In this new arrangement by Mack Wilberg, David Warner’s lyrics retain the original noël’s pastoral themes while expounding on the narrative and emotional power of all Christmas stories.
Combining timeless music with real-life examples of sharing light, it is a universally moving program that invites hope and welcomes the spirit of sharing goodness this holiday season.
Watch The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform 'Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming'. This German devotional poem that this hymn is based on, “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen”, dates from the 15th century. Based on Messianic prophecies from Isaiah, the rose in this carol is a symbolic reference to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
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Watch the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform a rousing version of 'Here We Come A-Caroling'. The practice of communal caroling involved going door-to-door at Christmastime offering wishes of prosperity and good health and sharing food or drink together. This carol gained popularity during the Victorian era, when it likely spread to the United States with English immigrants.
Jen is a web producer at KPBS, responsible for program promotion, membership-related activities, and is the editor of the KPBS community calendar. Jen has worked at KPBS since 2000. She is originally from Las Vegas and attended UNLV.
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