On Friday and Saturday, April 20-21, 2018, the Temple Square Chorale and Orchestra at Temple Square will join their musical talents for this year’s Spring Concert in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.

This year’s program will include two much loved Johannes Brahms works. The Orchestra will perform The Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80, one of Brahms’ most beloved instrumental music compositions.  The Orchestra and the Temple Square Chorale together will perform Brahms’ renowned Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem)

Christian Pursell, the bass-baritone soloist for Ein Deutsches Requiem, is following his grandfather as a soloist in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. In April 1941, his grandfather Frank Pursell, was the guest baritone soloist for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s performances of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St. Paul. Christian is currently an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera. He is the 2018 Richard F. Gold Career Grant recipient, 2016 semi-finalist of the Metropolitan Opera, and has performed on stages throughout the country.

Clara Hurtado Lee, the soprano soloist for Ein Deutsches Requiem, is a frequent concert soloist throughout the Intermountain Region and abroad in Italy. Clara’s brother, Isaac, was the tenor soloist in the 2011 Temple Square Chorale and Orchestra at Temple Square’s spring concert performing “All My Soul within Me Shudders,” from Christ on the Mountain of Olives. Ms. Hurtado is in the doctoral program at the University of Utah and teaches voice at Utah Valley University. 

Concert tickets are free but required. Tickets are still available at lds.org/events, by calling 801-570-0080 or at the Conference Center ticket office. Admission to this event is limited to those ages eight and older. Patrons without tickets are invited to stand by for last-minute seating which is usually available each evening. The standby line will form at the flagpole by the Tabernacle at 6:30 p.m. for the evening performances

The Temple Square Chorale was formed in 1999, as a training ensemble for new members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It is comprised of new members completing their post-audition training as well as those members who were new to the Choir the previous year plus other current Choir members to provide a complement of roughly 110 singers.

The Orchestra at Temple Square is a companion ensemble to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Each week up to 85 musicians, drawn from a roster of more than 200 volunteers, provide instrumental support to the Choir in the weekly broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. The Orchestra performs with the Choir in joint concerts as well as presenting its own fall symphonic concert in the Tabernacle.