Layton Utah Music Workshop 9-13-08

The long awaited workshop was a wonderful day full or musical spiritual insiration and education. Because I was there the week before I was able to participate in the choir for the opening session. I haven't sung in a choir for quite awhile and some of those impatient feelings of being in a choir started to fester, but in the end it was such a wonderful experience and I was so glad I arranged to do it! Our choir director was Kathy Skidmore of the Tabernacle Choir. I gre up with her kids and with her music. I was also glad to get to know again what a wonderful woman she is.



There was also a youth choir. A 2 hour block of the classes was a youth choral instruction class and 130 kids showed up for it! Amazing! These are kids 12-18....what a dedicated young group of kids! They were amazing too! After the day of classes when I went back to the chapel for the closing fireside (the youth were the prelude and opening song) I immediately got emotion just by the sight of that many youth there to sing in this choir. It was truly awesome!

The fire side itself was really wow too. There were three performers, alex Boye...former pop and broadway singer who currently sings in the tabernacle choir, Jon Schmidt....a well known LDS artist throughout the church who write Piano and is quite the performer!, and Celena Shafer...an operatic soprano singing recently with the ST Louis Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, PIttsburgh Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and of course the Utah Symphony and Opera! All three performers were simply amazing! I was so grateful to have had the opportunity to have been there, met so many wonderful people and to have felt the spirit of the Lord so strongly!