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Show 1 An audience, estimated at 30,000, listen to Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing at "birthday party" commemoration in San Diego. Choir's 'Salute To San Diego' By HAROLD LUNDSTROM Deseret News Music Editor SAN DIEGO Build it out of 52,000 comfortable seats, with convenient nearby acres of parking area, and 400 spiral staircases, Escalators, and elevators to easily reach the upper tiers. Color it brilliant reds, yellows, oranges, and golden tans and caJU it the beautiful new San Diego Stadium.. Decorate it with a specially constructed bleacher, with red, white and blue bunting, out over second base and face it toward homeplate. Populate it with 300 singers, Richard conductor; Alexander Condi e, Schreiner, their accompanist; Elder Richard L. Evans, their commentator; and an enthusiastic audience estimated to include nearly 30,000 people. Add to it an excellent temporary amplification sound system, and then wrap all of this into a program of popular concert, sacred, patriotic, and folk classics. Dedicate the entire exciting extravanza to the two million and more citizens of San . Diego. Then call it the Tabernacle Choir's Happy Birthday Salute to San Diego which is celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding by the Franciscan padre, Junipero Serra, in July, 1769. All this excitement took place Friday, July 18, a long ami memorable day for the 319 Tabernacle Choir singers and staff and the dozens (probably hundreds) of San Diego friends and patrons of the famed choir. It turned out to be a long day for the choir which was at the Salt Lake Airport jets by 8 a.m. to depart in two chartered Airplanes, one each furnished by United 20 lines and Fromier Airlines, and returned hours later at 2 a.m. Saturday. In these 20 hours, the Tabernacle Choir round trip, held flew the circa 1,400-mil- e an early afternoon rehearsal in the San Diego Stadium, and presented its evening concert that began at 8 p.m. And in these 20 hours Tabernacle Choir their was also feted to a cool boat cruise over several miles of the beautiful San Diego Harbor, fed a box lunch in the stadium at the time of the singers rehearsal, given other sightseeing tours of San Diego that included depending which bus the singa visit to the ers happened to be lading Balboa Park Zoo, to sitting in the bus under some shade trees eating ice cream in the heat, to seeing some of the many attractive residential districts. Then the entire choir party was further honored with an evening dinner that really turned out to be a banquet of elegant proportions. Just prior to concert time, the Tabernacle Choir staff executives, led by their president, Lsaac M. Stewart and his assistant, Stanford P. Darger, and the presidents of the San Diego area stakes, led by their Regional Representative, John M. Russon, met high up in the Stadium Club on the press level of the San Diego Stadium with y the San Diego City, County, 200th Commission leaders and their parties. 0 The myriad details of the Tabernacle Choirs concert in San Diego were coordid nated by Barry P. Knudsen, Stake. of San and long-tim- e Diego president All the excitement of the event was matched by the impressive performance by the Tabernacle Choir, Mr. Condie, and Mr. Schreiner. Almost a highlight of the beautiful singing was the unusually successful sound amplification. Despite the fact that one battery of speakers faced the crowd over first base and the other faced over third base, the sound was so balanced that t seemed to come directly from the sing s on stage. The system was the work of Paul Evans, Richard Welch, and Ray Loveless, of the Tabernacle Choir technical staff . from KSL Continued on page 11 Anni-versar- .. AM-FM- choir members from plane. ' J WEEK ENDING JULY 26, 1969 CHURCH- -7 |