Recapture the Magic of Twenty Years of Inspiring Concerts

Starting Monday, December 13 (PBS) and Thursday, December 16 (BYUtv), our 2021 Christmas special—a unique two-hour retrospective special 20 Years of Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir—with narrator and performer Tony^® Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell. When COVID precluded the taping of a live concert in 2020, this special was crafted to bring the joy and peace of Christmas to audiences with uplifting music and messages for the holiday season.

During the 2020 Christmas season even though The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square were quiet, without any public announcement and absolutely no fanfare, Brian Stokes Mitchell, a former guest artist with the Choir, came back to remember and relive twenty years of inspiring Christmas concerts. Filmed with COVID protocols in place, Mitchell, or “Stokes” as he is known to colleagues, does more than merely narrate the two-hour retrospective program. He expertly guides the audience through the process of creating these twenty years of concerts that have touched hearts and reminded audiences why we celebrate Christmas.

The program unfolds in nine segments with music and stories from many time periods and cultures. Within each segment, musical selections are woven together to create a single musical arc. This innovation allows the Choir to present over 40 guest artists with excerpts from over 60 songs, carols, and stories, which would be impossible to do through a more typical concert approach. The segments are woven together with an original score based on the carol “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” The result is a feast of musical offerings as rich and diverse as the members of the viewing audience themselves.

Audiences will also be thrilled with the range of new additions to Christmas content from Brian Stokes Mitchell’s new performance of “That’s What Christmas Means to Me” with Mack Wilberg at the piano, to the new Richard Elliott organ solo—an adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s “Trepak,” from Nutcracker Suite, to the heavenly sounding “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” with The Tabernacle “virtual” Choir.

PBS:

Monday, December 13 at 7:00 p.m. MT (8:00 p.m. ET)
Thursday, December 16 at 11:00 p.m. MT; (PBS Utah; check pbs.org elsewhere)
Friday, December 24 at 8:00 p.m. MT (9:00 p.m. ET)
Saturday, December 25 at 5:00 p.m. MT; (PBS Utah; check pbs.org elsewhere)

BYUtv:

Thursday, December 16 at 7:00 p.m. MT (9:00 p.m. ET)
Sunday, December 19 at 5:00 p.m. MT (7:00 p.m. ET)
Friday, December 24 at 8:00 p.m. MT (10:00 p.m. ET)
Saturday, December 25 at 1:35 p.m. MT (3:35 p.m. ET

Streaming and On-Demand Options to the on-air TV broadcasts for the Christmas specials will be available for streaming across PBS’s video streaming platforms starting December 13 at 7:00 p.m. MT, including PBS.org, the PBS app, and PBS’s OTT (“over the top”) channels. The TV special will also be available for viewing on-demand at BYUtv.org and on the BYUtv app starting on December 16 at 7:00 p.m. MT.

PBS and BYUtv Partnerships
Since 2004, the Choir’s Christmas specials have become a beloved PBS tradition where the programs have consistently ranked as the most viewed PBS holiday programs. BYUtv has worked with The Tabernacle Choir since 2017 to bring the specials to PBS working hand-in-hand with partner station GBH—the largest creator of PBS content for TV and the web.

Additional Ways to Enjoy!

Enjoy the full two-hour special plus over 30 minutes of bonus features on a DVD entitled “20 Years of Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir” available for purchase now. Audio recordings of music from the 20 Years of Christmas with The Tabernacle Choir PBS or BYUtv special–either recordings of songs in the special or another Choir and Orchestra recording of the same title—can be streamed on a Spotify playlist entitled “20 Years of Christmas with the Tabernacle Choir.” Videos of many of the segments can be viewed on a YouTube playlist of the same name. All three links can be found on smartURL.it/TabChoirChristmas.