From the Crossroads of the West

Day 3--When we arrived at our campground in Salt Lake City on Thursday night, we hurried downtown to a 7:30 pm  rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which was practicing for its weekly Sunday broadcast, "Music and the Spoken Word," the longest, continuous-running radio broadcast in the country.

No other choir sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. More than 360 local musicians volunteer their time to sing in the choir. Each one is a talented singer. Together, their sound is incomparable. Add a huge pipe organ and a full symphony orchestra in the outstanding acoustics of a 20,000-person auditorium, and you have a taste of heaven on earth.

During the two-hour rehearsal, the choir practiced only three songs: Marta Keen's lyrical "Homeward Bound," Cesar Frank's "Praise, Praise the Lord" (from Psalm 150), and John Rutter's "I Will Sing with Spirit." For the two of us, who met in a radio choir and who fell in love on a choir tour, it was a thrill to see and hear the rehearsal.

When the choir finished singing "Homeward Bound," we both had tears in our eyes. The lyrics of this song were particularly meaningful to us because we had come to Salt Lake City to revisit Bas’ boyhood memories of growing up in this city, which was his home for seven years. Click on this YouTube link  or, if you can see it, on the YouTube video below if you’d like to hear this song for yourself.  Click here for the lyrics.