Today in Utah, we are celebrating Pioneer Day, which marks the day when Brigham Young and Mormon pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. To commemorate the occasion, I'm going to share with you a performance from when I was a part of the Men's Chorus at Brigham Young University. This performance took place April 2007 at the LDS General Conference, which is a meeting the church hosts twice a year. The live audience in the building would have been around 21,000 but it's estimated the worldwide audience watching on TV, streaming on the internet and listening on the radio would have been around 2 million so, this is by far the largest audience I've ever performed for.
The name of this piece is "I Love the Lord." It shares the same music as the hymn, "Be Still My Soul." The music was originally written in 1899 by the Finish composer Jean Sibelious as the Finlandia Hymn and has been adapted for many uses including a national anthem and a school song. Our version was arranged by the BYU choral instructor, Ronald Staheli. The words for "I Love the Lord" where written by John Tanner and are adapted from a passage of Mormon scripture known as "The Pslam of Nephi."
I think it's a beautiful piece and sums up my feelings about the gospel better than I ever could.
Visit http://jakehaws.com/ep-56-song-i-love-the-lord-byu-mens-chorus to watch the video of this performance, download a free mp3 of the song and read the passage of scripture the song is based on.
Episode 26