A Summer Celebration of Song - The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Santino Fontana

Every year around the 24th of July, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir presents a Pioneer Day-themed concert at the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City, UT. Similar to the annual Christmas extravaganza, but toned down in presentation, they invite a major artist to join them as they present a concert that is free to the community in their massive 21,000-seat auditorium: A Summer Celebration of Song.

Though the concert took place near Pioneer Day, there was much to be desired addressing the holiday. Pioneers are an important part of history for Utahns, but only two pieces at the beginning of the concert addressed the holiday including a formulaic arrangement of "They, the Builders of the Nation" (complete with a trademark-oddly bombastic ending) by Mack Wilberg, and a bland and banal performance of "Faith in Every Footstep."

Fontana and the Orchestra at Temple Square

This year, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (MoTab) invited rising star Santino Fontana. An award-winning broadway actor, most will likely know Fontana from his recent role as Prince Hans in Walt Disney's Academy Award winning film, Frozen. Fontana seemed genuinely excited to be performing with the world-renowned ensemble in front of such a large audience. Ditching the Pioneer theme, and adopting a Broadway-film-theme, they began with some songs from West Side Story. Fontana has a cool, lyric voice that has a certain innocence about it, yet when he reaches his higher register, it pierces through with a bite that is exciting and resonant.

Fontana performed some pieces from Cinderella, a work he is quite familiar with, and then "She Likes Basketball" from Burt Bacharach's Promises, Promises. An odd choice for sure, but the song with Fontana backed-up by the MoTab was fantastic and one of the highlights of the evening. Hal David's quirky text and Bacharach's trademark sound was an excellent addition to the program and even the MoTab sounded good as they played "Carpenter's back-up singers" to the charming Fontana. Another highlight of the evening was a stirring rendition of "Never Never Land" from Peter Pan. Meredith Wilson's charming song about the fantasy island of Peter Pan was given a marvelous arrangement and performance by the choir, the Orchestra at Temple Square and Fontana alike. It had emotion and passion that was almost absent from the rest of the program.

Richard Elliot and the Orchestra at Temple Square performed the "Hot Pipes" movement from Victor Davies' Jazz Concerto for Organ and Orchestra. Always an audience favorite, the piece is trite and corny, and besides Elliot's impeccable pedal work, they performance was sloppy and inconsistent. The audience was never-the-less extremely pleased.

Fontana snaps a "selfie" with the choir

The concert concluded with a "Happy" medley that seemed to be enjoyed by all. At almost exactly one hour in duration, the concert, despite Santino's efforts, was lacking in energy and polish. Perhaps the musicians are given too much too often to perfect anything, but regardless, while Santino gave it everything he had (including his charm and personality-even taking a "selfie" onstage with the choir and orchestra) the choir still sounded anemic and amateur. Despite the 360 voices on stage, their volume barely reached the "loud" stage, and when it did, there were extreme balance issues. Their words are almost incomprehensible. Arguably, this is one of the largest and most difficult places in the state to perform music by its sheer size, but this reviewer was on the front row of the entire massive building and still felt these problems were prevalent. This is where what I call "the jumbo-tron effect" comes into play. Even in the front row, I found the concert so boring at times, I preferred to watch the sweeping camera angles on the jumbo-trons, rather than the actual performers themselves. It is time they lived up to their reputation that being such a big choir has garnered them, rather that just allowing mediocre to be acceptable.