Virginia Sen. Mark Warner conducts Mormon Tabernacle Choir encore

By Gerry Avant

WASHINGTON, DC — Mormon Tabernacle Choir director Mack Wilberg
paid a visit this morning to U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., to
give him some advice.

By the senator’s own admission, he needed to hear what Wilberg
had to say and, more important, observe the music director in
action. The advice and direction were specific: how to conduct the
choir and Orchestra at Temple Square during this evening’s concert
at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va.

Warner hinted that he is not the most musically inclined member
of the Senate. “In third grade for our Christmas play I was one of
the three wise men and, literally, the teacher told me to just
mouth the words.”

He claimed he wasn’t much better on instruments, saying he was
further stunted in his musical experience when he took up tenor
saxophone and was in his middle school’s marching band. The big
event for his small town was the homecoming parade, during which
the middle school’s marching band got to play with the high
school’s band.

“I was so dreadful,” Warner said. “I couldn’t march and play and
keep time, so the band director would make me march in front of the
whole band, hoping to shame me into doing it right. I would dread
homecoming day.”

He said that directing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the
Orchestra at Temple Square will help him overcome that “crushing
blow” of his school days’ musical experience. “I want to get some
pictures of me directing,” he said, perhaps hinting at the
possibility of sharing them with a few critics of his childhood
experiences with music.