“More Precious than Gold”
The Sacramento California Temple Youth Cultural Celebration, Part 5

(continued from Part 4)

The Music

All of the songs for “More Precious than Gold,” except for the hymns, were original, and according to Stan Zenk, who was an editor of our LDS Hymns book, “some of them are worthy of becoming classics.”

Paul Allen and team just before the performance.

Under the direction of Paul Allen, the script was presented to 12 musicians in the temple district, with the places for songs noted and the essence of the ideas expressed. The musicians were told to think about the script and the song ideas and, instead of being assigned to work on a piece of music, see if they felt personally impressed to create on any of the songs.

By the next week, several of the musicians already had composed songs and were ready to play them. Remarkably, with very few exceptions, the composers had created songs that spanned the various needs of the script with few duplications, and music was composed within about six weeks.

Song writers included Sherrie Chretien, Stan Zenk, Cecilie Busath King, James ‘Uiha, Rob Kroff and Ria Barrdo-Kroff, and Rosalind Crosby. Lyricists and orchestrators included Richard and Jeri Clinger, Wendy Palmer and Kathy Visher.

To create music worthy of the standard they wanted, Paul Allen and Stan Zenk worked first to lay the track for a synthetic orchestra. Then later another track was added of a live orchestra of about 40 youth in the temple district. With this approach, the music had the sounds of a live orchestra with the support of a synthetic one, and amateur performers ended up with a powerful sound.

“We didn’t know what happened when it actually came time to lay down the live orchestra,” Paul said. “but people won’t believe the power of what they hear in this program.”

This was not an easy trick to accomplish. The youth received the music well in advance, learned it, and then came together for two weekends of recording sessions. Recording with a synthetic orchestra is so difficult, that by about noon on the first Saturday, discouragement had settled over the room. They stopped and had a prayer together, and after that everything changed. “The stress lifted and the Spirit came into the process. We were able to record about five songs in two hours,” said Paul.

A sound track of the choir was also created for the evening and then used in a unique way. As the choir sang live the evening of the performance, they sang to monitors with the pre-recorded songs, but the audience only heard the live voices pumped back to them.

The result again was masterful, moving — amazing.

Impact on the Youth

After all the compliments, after the pouring out of the Spirit upon the performance, the final measure of success was in the lives of the youth.

President Treadway said, “You must all know of the impact this event has had on my youth. They were jubilant, euphoric, and joyful last night. Young women who come from the hardest neighborhoods with no family support outside of youth leaders, were as radiant last night as I’ve ever seen them. Young men who shyly avoided opportunities to speak in the past, enthusiastically agreed to speak in Stake Conference today.”

Timothy Bradford, a priest from the Roseville 2nd Ward, summed it up in a thank you note to Scott Eckern. “This was such a wonderful experience and I believe it has helped prepare me for my mission.”

That’s all the thanks hundreds of adults who worked a year for a single performance needed to know.

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