This is your invitation to join The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square for their annual summer concert Music for a Summer Evening. This year's concert will be the culminating celebration of 90 years of the Choir’s weekly broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. The special pre-recorded program will air on Saturday, July 18, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. The 60-minute broadcast will feature specially selected performances by the Choir and Orchestra along with interviews and performances of renowned guest artists who have appeared with the Choir. This special celebrates the impact and influence on audiences around the world of Music & the Spoken Word weekly broadcasts, which span nearly the entire lifetime of radio. 

The special will be available worldwide Saturday, July 18 at 7 p.m. mountain on the following broadcast and internet channels: TheTabernacleChoir.org; the Choir's YouTube channel; the Choir's Facebook page;   Broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org; Latter-day Saint Channel, and by using the Alexa Choir skill.  The program will be rebroadcast on BYUtv cable television, BYUtv.org, and the BYUtv app on Sunday, July 19 at 5 p.m. mountain.

This special broadcast celebration replaces the Choir and Orchestra’s annual July concert usually held in conjunction with community-wide Pioneer Day celebrations. The pre-recorded program was originally planned because the Choir and Orchestra anticipated being on tour in July 2020. Even though the 2020 Choir tour has been postponed and community Pioneer Day celebrations have been cancelled due to Covid-19, the pre-recorded 90th anniversary celebration will still air on schedule. (The 2021 tour will take place in the same cities and countries originally planned.) 

Music & the Spoken Word has come to mean even more to many households all over the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, in place of live broadcasts of the Choir and Orchestra, each week specially selected encore episodes of Music & the Spoken Word are aired on radio, television, cable, and throughout the world over the internet. Tens of thousands more listeners each week are using the broadcast as a start to in-home worship services and receiving the special uplift that the program offers.

As Bishop Gerald Caussé, Presiding Bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and advisor to The Tabernacle Choir organization, explained: “Music is an international language—sacred music in particular. When the Choir sings, there is no language anymore. There are no borders. Music is a way for the Church to reach out to all the world, all people, and communicate with them from the heart.” 

Once the anniversary celebrations conclude and current health restrictions end, the Choir, Orchestra, and Tabernacle organists plan to continue the weekly tradition of broadcasting Music & the Spoken Word to share music that has the power to touch hearts, help people feel closer to the divine, and celebrate God’s love for all His children.