Busy Mormon Tabernacle Choir Singer Insists She’s Blind Only to Her Limitations

Soprano Linda Braithwaite is one musician in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir who doesn’t sight read her music. But that doesn’t slow her down. She memorizes it before rehearsal.

Blind since birth, Braithwaite doesn’t let much slow her down.

“I’ve developed tenacity almost to a fault,” she says. “I’m so used to being told my limitations, I won’t give up until I prove to myself what I can do.”

She’s proved a lot. A talented musician, she teaches private voice and piano lessons. She’s conducted church choirs, is a professional piano tuner, and is a certified Red Cross instructor in life saving, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first-aid and emergency survival.

To earn a living, she works as rehabilitation teacher for the state of Utah, teaching music, homemaking and communications skills to the visually impaired.

Her great love as a child was music, and she studied piano. She did not take singing lessons until she was an adult.

‘Instrument Inside Me’

“I studied voice at the University of Maryland because I didn’t have a piano at home. I discovered there was this instrument inside me I had no idea existed,” she says.

Later, when she moved to Salt Lake City, she met a blind woman in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir who encouraged her to audition.

“I had to submit an audition tape, and after that was accepted, I took the music fundamentals test. Then came the live audition, which included singing without accompaniment, testing my range and a sight reading test.

“The vocal coach played four measures of the sight reading for me. I memorized the phrase instantaneously and sang it with the accompaniment. Then the conductor doubled the length of the phrase, but I was still able to remember it. I guess I did well, because I was invited to join the choir.”

With that invitation, Braithwaite’s challenge began. The Tabernacle Choir performs about 350 selections a year, in its weekly nationwide broadcasts and in concert, and rarely rehearses a piece more than three times before performing it. The choir’s 340 members rely on their sight reading skills to help handle the demanding repertoire.

Music Schedule

“I receive a schedule of the music two weeks ahead of time,” Braithwaite explains. “A reader dictates the words to me, and I copy them in Braille. She sits at the piano and plays my part slowly, and reads aloud the note values, dynamics and expression marks. I take all of it down in Braille.”

There’s no way to read music and words together in Braille, so Braithwaite memorizes either the words or music, whichever is simpler, in a selection.

“I don’t have any more difficulty with the harder pieces than anyone else in the choir,” she says.

Conductor Jerold Ottley agrees. “We have three blind members of the choir who memorize faster than anyone else in the group,” he says. “They’re generally prepared with their music before anyone else.”

Braithwaite’s nine years with the choir have been fulfilling. Though choir members are not paid, the satisfaction in sharing their talent with others is great.

“There’s a lot of joy in the music we sing,” says Braithwaite. “It’s an uplifting experience. There’s nothing like sitting in the middle of 300 voices singing. That big sound is overwhelming.