‘We needed to be in the Philippines’: Tabernacle Choir highlights Filipinos’ importance

MANILA, Philippines — Following a successful and viral performance with The Tabernacle Choir in December 2022, acclaimed Filipina Broadway singer and actress Lea Salonga reunites with the internationally-renowned choir for its first ever concert in the country, the second stop for the group’s “Hope” world tour.

Besides Lea, Filipina YouTube sensation Ysabelle Cuevas will also join the choir as guest artist in two, invitation-only performances in Mall of Asia Arena on February 27 and 28, which are in total expected to draw around 18,000 spectators. 

Choir president Michael Leavitt said in a press conference in Conrad Hotel Manila yesterday that they decided to bring the “Hope” tour to the Philippines because apart from garnering millions of views for Lea’s December 2022 performance with the choir, there are 850,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Philippines. 

A former three-term Governor of Utah, Leavitt held prominent roles in former US President George W. Bush's Cabinet, first as the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and then as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The country, he said, also has one of the highest viewerships of the religion’s TV and radio broadcast “Music & the Spoken Word,” which at 95 years old, is reportedly the longest-running broadcast program in the world.

“It’s very popular in the Philippines. Among our international audiences, this is where our audiences are most robust,” he shared.

“We see to define populations where there are concentrations of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and where there has been an interest in the choir and when we see the performance of the choir being able to bring a sense of peace, sense of healing, and in some way, spark the feeling we all have when we have the divinity in us.”

Besides the Philippines, the choir will be bringing their world tour to some parts of Asia and South America, and for them to have the Philippines on tour means that the country is very important for the choir.

“So, it’s a decision we take very seriously because we don’t have unlimited volunteers, we don’t have an unlimited number of places