Behind the Mo-Tab scenes

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Hancock Fabrics, I was measuring out 20+ yards of cream colored "Sassy Satin" for a customer. It was all the cream "Sassy Satin" in the entire Western Region of Hancock Fabrics. The customer was a member of the wardrobe committee for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And you know those white dresses you see them wearing on TV all the time? They're actually cream colored and the trim is "Sassy Satin."

I, as a special special individual, have an amazing fascination with lots of things and I was pretty darn excited to know that some of the replacement trim on old dresses (or the new trim on new dresses) may be the "Sassy Satin" that I measured. When I was talking to the customer (Susan) about how cool her job must be, she said, "I could probably give you a tour if you want."

I so totally jumped on that. With just a few phone calls to arrange it, I met her bright and early outside the tabernacle yesterday for a tour of the underground catacombs that make up the Mo-Tab suite. I invited my friend Clint to come with me because he's a music-nerd too and because this was the last chance to see him before he gets deployed to Afghanistan next week.

Susan's unofficial tour took us underneath the Tabernacle to see some of the spaces the choir uses. They renovated the whole space underground when they renovated the rest of the building a few years ago. It doesn't smell new anymore, but it sure looks amazing. Everything is bright and clean and shiny. Much better than the first time I saw it back in 2005ish (?) when I played a concert at the Tabernacle with West Valley Symphony.

For no reason at all, I was uncharacteristically hesitant to take pictures on our mini-tour, but we saw some pretty awesome things. Here's a picture I took of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir yesterday during "Music and the Spoken Word," in case you need a reminder of what they look like. The ladies are wearing their lavender dresses. And for the record, God bless the lighting-tech that decided florescent pink is a good color behind the organ. I love it!

Susan started the tour in a giant closet full of all the extra dresses arranged carefully by color. They keep lots on hand in every color and size for choir members old and new. Each choir member has her own dress tailored to fit her. When they get a new choir member they'll either give her an extra existing dress or make a new one (whichever fits best).

She showed us bolts and bolts of fabric in the color of each dress. When they choose a new dress pattern and color they order several hundred yards of the fabric so it'll last for a long long time and so it'll all be the same dye-lot. They're about to retire the real light-turquoise dresses because they're out of that color of fabric. I was surprised (and not surprised) that all the dresses--regardless of color--are made out of a similar crepe material. I don't like the texture of it, but it hangs well and I believe it's machine washable. Crepe is polyester so it doesn't wrinkle much. It's got little to no shine to it which I'm sure is good for television and lighting and stuff.

Each dress has magnets sewn in up by the shoulders where they can easily attach collars or special broaches that also have magnets sewn in. Each dress has wide-spaced and narrower-spaced magnets so they can make the collars hang the same on everybody regardless of body shape. The dark-turquoise dresses in particular have either casual lace collars or the fancy beaded collars pictured below. Sometimes they dress it up and sometimes they dress it down.

Apparently the magnets are so strong (like the ones on the missionary mag-tags) that a lot of the beaded collars were falling apart because of how the choir ladies were pulling them off. This picture is all the recently-repaired beaded collars in the sewing room...they're waiting to hand them out again until the seamstresses can have a training session with the choir. "This is how to take off your collar without ruining it." All these hangers stuck together because of the magnets. :)

Inside the alterations room was this whole closet full of pearl necklaces. The top row are short ones, the middle row was long ones, the third row was blingy-pearls, and the fourth row (not in the picture) was special blue necklaces. The wardrobe ladies have a little necklace-tree that they fill with the appropriate necklaces for the day and then they put it by the door to the dressing room so the choir ladies can take a necklace as they come or go before the performance. For yesterday's performance they were allowed to wear their own jewelry.

We didn't get to see the men's dressing room, but Susan said it isn't as nice as the ladies'. Each lady has a sort of open closet (kind of like you see in locker rooms) where she'll keep all her choir dresses. They have a laminated guide at the back of each stall detailing the order of how to hang the dresses. They like everything to look uniform and neat because they often have general authorities in there.

After seeing the storage closet (with probably 2-300 dresses), the sewing room, and the ladies' dressing room she took us to see the music library. The Mo-Tab music library huge and is amazingly organized. In the main hallway each choir member has a locker with a combination where they can get or return music. Then inside the library all the locker slots are open and labeled so music can be easily distributed or gathered.

Inside the library are rows and rows and rows of music. The rows are on a roll-y system so they can pack more rows into a small space and then they turn a giant knob on the end of the row to move it back and forth on the tracks. (SUU has some like this on the first floor of the library.) Down each row are hundreds of carefully labeled, alphabetized shelves of music. Given the cost of a single part of sheet music, I bet we saw more than a million dollars worth of music just waiting to be sung. I have no idea how the directors would pick what to sing each week and for each performance...it's like trying to pick a favorite star in the heavens.

We also got to see the rehearsal space (I think it was, anyway) for the Orchestra at Temple Square. I would so love to play with them someday! I had to take this picture of their 8 basses in hard cases. The hard cases made them look huge-o and somewhat ominous. This space is either formerly or presently known as "The Horseshoe" and is right under the stage-part of the Tabernacle. You can see that the ceiling is sloped in comparison to the floor which is kind of trippy when you're in there. The back of the room has about a 12 foot ceiling the the front of the room is only about 7 feet. I can't imagine what it would be like to practice with a 120-piece orchestra in there because I think the ceiling would make the acoustics sound weird.

The tour didn't last long....maybe only 15-20 minutes, but I was absolutely enthralled the whole time with everything there was to see and learn. I love learning cool things that you maybe wouldn't ever know otherwise. I can't help but share it all with my blog-readers. We were touring while the choir rehearsed. They always rehearse the entire "Music and the Spoken Word" program, take a short break, and then perform it for a live broadcast at 9:30 AM. The performance is free to the public and they had a really good turn out yesterday, especially (they said) for January.

We attended the 4,925th broadcast of "Music and the Spoken Word." I'm pretty sure this was my first time going, other than a couple times when I've been to the Sunday morning session of conference and they did the broadcast before conference. Before the program started they had the 40 newest members of the choir stand...the new members can't sing with the choir until they finish their training known as "Choir School."

It was fun to bring Clint with me because he and I have a mutual appreciation for music. He and I played in Jazz band together when we were both at Snow College and he has since become a music teacher. His job will wait patiently for him until he gets back from Afghanistan next January.

The "Spoken Word" portion of the broadcast was a message about a teenage boy with cancer named David and what he did to brighten the lives of those around him. David recently passed away and the announcer/MC guy for the broadcast's daughter sang at David's funeral. After the broadcast they had David's parents stand in the audience. I bawled like a little baby...messy black-eyeliner cry all over my face. That's always a good way to start a Sunday morning, right?

Despite the fact that I had to wake up at 6:30AM on a Sunday, after only four hours' sleep, I loved my Sunday. I made it back to Herriman just in time to attend my parents' ward and then came back to Cedar City in the afternoon. What an awesome day.

The moral of the story is, if someone says, "I could probably give you a tour if you're interested," ALWAYS take them up on the offer. And next time you see the white Mo-Tab choir dresses, think of Susan and her cream colored "Sassy Satin."

PS, this isn't a temple fountain, but pretty good just the same, right?