Choir Requires More Than Singing

You want to join a 155-year-old singing group that has recorded five gold albums and won both an Emmy and a Grammy?

You want to be part of a group that has as many as 150 gigs a year, including hosting the longest-running weekly radio broadcast in American history?

You love singing in really cool robes?

Then you’ll want to apply to join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

But you’d better be able to do more than just sing.

First, you’ll have to be a “temple-worthy” member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

That means you have to follow commandments including no alcohol, tobacco, tea or coffee, plus you’ll have to give 10% of your income to the church.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have to show your driver’s license. You can’t be younger than 25, or older than 55.

The age limit for Choir members is actually 60, but a five-year commitment is required.

(Once you hit 61 you are not, as it might seem, kicked out on the street. According to the church, you are “retired.”)

Then, you may have to change your address. All Choir members must live within a 100-mile radius of Salt Lake City.

Once those prerequisites are met, you can call the Choir office for an application, which are only accepted in January and July.

With that application, you must send in an audition tape that features, among other things, one verse of a hymn.

If the application and tape pass muster, then you must drive to the Choir office and pass a Musical Skills Inventory test.

After that, if you haven’t yet been cut, you audition in front of the Choir bosses.

The best of those auditions are invited to complete a three-month session in the Temple Square Chorale, a training choir that helps singers in both technique and theory.

At the end of three months, the best of the best are invited to join the Choir, with a capital “C.”

You won’t make any money--the Choir is totally made up of volunteers--but you will be following in the footsteps of those who began a singing group just 29 days after the first pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake City area, on Aug. 22, 1847.

“We view music as being one of the languages of God,” said Keith Atkinson, director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in California.

Bill Plaschke