Choir Featured in “Small World” 50th Anniversary Video
Contributed By By R. Scott Lloyd, Church News staff writer
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square perform a Pioneer Day concert at the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City on Friday, July 19, 2013.
Article Highlights
- The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is featured in a video to kick off the 50-year celebration of the "It's a Small World" Disney parks attraction that debuted in 1964.
It was 50 years ago at the New York World’s Fair that “It’s a Small World”—what has since become one of the most iconic of all the attractions of Disney theme parks—debuted as a tribute to UNICEF’s work for children around the world.
As a kickoff to a worldwide celebration April 10, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was among people from more than 25 countries featured in a video shown March 21 in a segment of Good Morning America on ABC-TV.
The video can be viewed on the Disney Parks blog at disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog.
Featured performing in turn snippets of the classic Sherman brothers song that is the centerpiece of the attraction are, among others, bagpipers in Scotland, Bollywood movie actors in India, a Mexican mariachi band, and a firefighter in New York City.
Near the end of the minute-and-a-half video the choir appears in its home setting of the Tabernacle in Salt Lake, singing its portion of the song.
“It is a delight to be part of today’s announcement,” said Ron Jarrett, president of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. “This iconic song and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir both cross generational and cultural boundaries to unite people through music.”
“I can’t believe that it’s been 50 years since my brother Robert and I wrote this little song,” co-composer Richard Sherman says at the outset of the video. “It meant a lot to me then, and it means so much more to me now.”
Smith wrote that on April 10, hundreds of people from the various Disney parks—Disneyland Resort in California, Walt Disney World in Florida, Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, Disneyland Paris in France, and Hong Kong Disneyland Resort—will come together to sing the song.
This is not the first connection that the Tabernacle Choir has had to the “Small World” attraction. The choir was featured at the New York World’s Fair where the attraction had its debut in 1964. There, the choir performed several selections and subsequently released an album of music that it performed at the fair.
Mormon Tabernacle Choir director Mack Wilberg directs the congregation in song at the morning session of the 183rd Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Sunday, October 6, 2013, in Salt Lake City. Photo by Tom Smart, Deseret News.
