Guest stars for the 2024 Tabernacle Choir Concerts include Dennis Haysbert and Ruthie Ann Miles

When Dennis Haysbert first heard that Temple Square’s Tabernacle Choir would dedicate its annual Christmas concert to the story of Kenyan philanthropist Charles Mulli, the actor said it was “concluded” that he would be there.

“This was a no-brainer for me… I have to be the one to tell this story,” Haysbert said Friday as he sat next to Mulli at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints conference center – where the final Christmas concert will take place on Saturday at 8 p.m

Tickets for the concert have already been distributed, but a line will form at Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City starting at 6:30 p.m. Haysbert, Broadway star Ruthie Ann Miles and the choir also performed on Thursday and Friday evenings.

“This performance conveys Christmas spirit on a monumental scale,” the choir’s president, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, said at a news conference Friday. “We are deeply grateful that (Haysbert, Miles and Mulli) have made (their) rich talents available… for this purpose.”

If you can’t get a ticket for Saturday’s concert, you can watch a broadcast of the “Music & the Spoken Word” choir concert on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. in the conference center. Haysbert and Miles will perform with the choir in a shortened version of the concert program. Doors open at 8:15 a.m.; Guests are asked to be seated by 9:15 a.m. Tickets are not required and spectators must be at least 8 years old. The program airs live on KSL-TV, Channel 5 in Utah and streams everywhere on the choir’s YouTube channel.

The full concert, the choir’s 25th annual Christmas presentation, will be shown next year on PBS and BYUtv. (Last year’s concert, featuring Broadway actor Michael Maliakel and “Downton Abbey” star Lesley Nicol, will air Christmas Eve, Tuesday, at 8:30 p.m. on KUED, PBS Utah, Channel 7 and Saturday through Christmas on BYUtv.)

Mulli, 75, founded the Christian non-profit organization Mully Children’s Family after selling his property and assets in 1989 to help orphaned street children by providing food, clothing and education. Inspired by his own story – when Mulli was 6 years old, he was abandoned by his family to live on the streets of Kangundo, a town in Kenya – Mulli and his family have more than 27,000 children, according to the nonprofit’s website helped in Kenya.

“It’s a really hard story to get through,” Haysbert said of telling Mulli’s story. “But I love the feeling that comes over me when I tell it.”

Haysbert said he became emotional when he first read the first lines of his script and believes “everyone on the planet” should hear more stories like Mulli’s.

“The more I read it, the longer I stayed with Dr. Mulli… It was like a deck of cards being put together and shuffled. It was like cream and coffee,” Haysbert said. “Once it starts mixing, it’s hard not to get closer.”

Haysbert – who played a senator-turned-president on the TV series “24” and provides the soothing voice in Allstate Insurance commercials – said the 21,000-seat conference center was “huge” but performing in it was surprisingly “intimate.” “.

Pointing to the conference center’s Schoenstein organ, Haysbert said he’s known “the choir for quite some time – especially this thing.”

Miles, who won a Tony for her portrayal of Lady Thiang in the Broadway revival of “The King and I,” said that despite its size, the auditorium creates a “connection” with the audience.

“As high and as far as it goes, it’s very intimate,” Miles said of the auditorium. Miles noted that she has performed in other huge spaces – such as the 18,000-seat Hollywood Bowl – but that the conference center’s auditorium is “like a Broadway house – very close, very easy to connect with people.” .

Miles said she remembers her and her mother, a Korean, listening to chamber music as girls – including recordings by The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra. Church music, she said, would become the “language in which we would connect.”

“I admired the musicality of everyone I heard on the recordings,” she said. “I never imagined that one day I would be on stage and performing with them.”

“With the added gift,” Miles added, “of my mother in the audience.”

Miles – who recently completed a three-month Broadway run of Ayad Akhtar’s one-act play “McNeal” with Robert Downey Jr. – said she felt “embraced” by the choir since she walked into her first rehearsal on Tuesday. The first pass, she said, went “so smoothly” because of the ensemble’s “discipline” and “tonal harmony.”

“Can I say easy?” Miles said, describing the two samples. “Everyone knew what their piece of the puzzle was.”

The hardest part, she said, “was walking around in high heels and trying not to trip on a dress.”

Mack Wilberg, the choir’s musical director, said Miles brought “a delicious warmth” to this year’s Christmas concert. But uniting the troupe as a whole, Wilberg said, was like cooking a “great meal.”

“If the meal all tastes the same, it’s not a great meal,” Wilberg said. “In music… we strive for unity in the program, but then a lot of contrast in the unity.”

When the performance begins, Haysbert is among the audience in the auditorium, and his walk back to the stage could seem like “an eternity,” he said. But the meaningful pause, he said, will give the audience “time to breathe” before the concert takes them on Mulli’s emotional journey.

“When I tell the story, I’m not here,” said Haysbert, pointing to the conference center’s large room, “I’m in Kenya.”