“I think you should write a musical work on Christ and the Americas.”
The suggestion came in 2009, seemingly out of the blue, from Brandon Stewart to his older brother, Brett Stewart. Two years earlier, the sibling duo had started Millennial Choirs & Orchestras in Orange County, California.
“I’m like, yeah, no,” then-31-year old Brett Stewart responded, feeling wary of taking on such a weighty project about cherished Latter-day Saint scripture. “I’m not interested.”
In 1977, the same year Brett Stewart was born, President Spencer W. Kimball, senior leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, published “The Gospel Vision of the Arts.” After mentioning great musical masters of the past, this prophetic leader proposed “the best has not yet been composed nor produced” — suggesting that “artists of tomorrow” could “use the coming of Christ to the Nephites as the material for a greater masterpiece.” He envisioned a day when future musicians “write and sing of Christ’s spectacular return to the American earth in power and great glory, and his establishment of the kingdom of God on the earth in our own dispensation.”
Throughout its 18 year history of creating music for a broad audience, this multi-state choir has at times touched on themes specific to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including their Palmyra performance of “The Vision” in 2024.
But at this early period, taking on musically the coming of Christ to the America’s depicted in the Book of Mormon’s 3rd Nephi felt more daunting than inspiring to this young composer. Even President Kimball had acknowledged, “No Handel nor other composer of the past or present or future could ever do justice to this great event.”
But the younger brother wouldn’t give up, asking, “Do you agree that this has to happen at some point?”
“Oh yeah ... it needs to happen,” Brett Stewart responded.
“Then if not you, who?” Brandon Stewart pressed. “I’m asking you to tackle it.”
That was the moment Brett Stewart remembered imagining a Book of Mormon musical really happening. “Okay, I’ll consider it.”
‘Yep, you’re doing it’
Progress was nonexistent, however, until Brett Stewart showed up at a rehearsal a few months later, surprised to learn that choir members had pooled money together to purchase a new computer and keyboard to replace an older one that was freezing up. The gift had a catch, though, captured in an accompanying message: “This is so that you can write this work for us.”
“Because of the overwhelming nature of the project,” Brandon Stewart reflected, his older brother had to be “thrown into it. I knew he had it in him.”
“We all cheered him on,” he added, although in the moment, his brother looked at him and said, “you little stinker. You forced me into this.”
“Yep, you’re doing it,” Brandon Stewart responded. “It was one of the greatest manipulative tactics for good that I’ve ever been the recipient of,” Brett Stewart recalls with some humor, seeing inspiration in his brother’s early nudging.
“I wouldn’t have done it, if I didn’t also feel like it was kind of calling my name.” He’s grateful now “for a brother who kind of just takes the bull by the horns and makes it happen.”
Soon, however, Brett Stewart’s own confidence began to grow, recalling coming across a skeptic who had argued “the Book of Mormon couldn’t ever be put to music the way that the book of the Bible was by Handel.”
“And I remember just thinking, ‘well, I’ll show him.’”
Early composition
In the year that followed, Brett Stewart described “months of marinating” when “different melodies came to me.” He also put the narrative down in a condensed libretto with the help of his past seminary teacher, Bruce Richardson, “a scriptorian like no other” whose Book of Mormon pages were brittle, “one of those guys.”
“There was so much material,” Brandon Stewart said, that they quickly realized this production alone could be a three-part, four-hour-long experience. Focus became key. “Okay, what do I want to keep? What do I want to omit, and how are we going to make this a storyline that works and maintains the integrity of the story itself?”
Brandon Stewart described witnessing the “painstaking process” of his brother ensuring scriptural alignment “while also creating a melody that resonates.”
The Stewart’s sister, Kristi Ward, now the Millennial Choirs & Orchestras artistic director, was part of that early chorus. She recalls having Brett arrive at rehearsal each week “in this zone” creatively with music hot of the press and sharing some of the process with the choir. “He paused at certain points and would go, ‘this one just came straight from heaven, like I can’t even explain it. It just came to me.’”
Brandon Stewart calls this early composition “very three dimensional” — recalling, “since we were seven and eight years old, we were saturated with the music of the masters … So our whole lives have been just completely entrenched in this.”
“When people ask me, ‘Hey, how do you become a good composer? My answer is, study and become great at an instrument. Study the piano, study the violin, become amazing at it, and then saturate your ears in the great music of the ages. Look at what the great composers did. Mozart was copying J.S. Bach. Beethoven was learning from Haydn, like, there’s a pattern here that you have to go through. You’ve got to pay your dues in a lot of ways to become a great composer. It doesn’t just happen.”
“Brett spent time with the masters — he’s done that,” Brandon Stewart continues. Compared with modern scores, he suggests such experience translates into works that “sink deeper into you, last longer for you, and will send you out of the hall singing those melodies, because they’re that infectious.”
A year after that first conversation, the show premiered in Southern California on March 31, 2010 — expanding to Arizona the following year. That album’s recording made it to the top of the Billboard classical chart that year, with an invitation to do several performances at the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
“And then it just kind of went away,” Brett Stewart tells Deseret News.
Resurrecting the Messiah in America
Years later, the brothers decided to reboot the show in 2020. Compared with its initial 250 performers in one location, the choir now had 6,000 participants in six locations (70% of whom were youth under the age of 18).
While singing the original, Ward recalls visualizing “what the experience would look like as a more staged production,” telling Brett Stewart: “you wrote this in such a short amount of time” originally (10 weeks). I think there’s a lot that we can do to it, to just help bring it to life in a different way and for a broader audience.”
The sibling trio decided to meet at a little library in Concord, Massachusetts, in 2019 and reviewed the whole work to consider different changes. Ward recalls suggestions like, “Hey, you know this melody that you took from the orchestra originally? Let’s take that melody and make it into a song.”
A new production was outlined drawing on the original melodies. Although Brett Stewart was still the composer, Brandon Stewart and Kristi Ward helped him “map out a path” to rewrite and “reimagine” the entire composition, transforming it from a classically-focused work to be more of a musical theatre production with an aim of “making it palatable to a wider audience.”
The new production is “not full fledged like you’d see in New York on Broadway with a lot of acting, talking and breaking into song,” Brandon Stewart clarified, but more “theatrical crossover Broadway style,” like the 10th anniversary performance of Les Misérables in Royal Albert Hall.
That was the new beginning. “The idea just started getting bigger and bigger,” Ward said, describing long phone calls back and forth among the siblings and “days dissecting every piece and just how we can bring this to life in a different way to reach more people.”
Ultimately, Ward joined her brothers as the third co-director of the production, in a family directing team. “It was always kind of a dream in the back of my mind to be able to bring it to life in a different way than the oratorio setting that it once was.”
While describing the earlier vision as “touching and very powerful,” Brandon Stewart said this “draft one” has been “baking and being reimagined for the past 15 years.”
“New songs have been added, and every song has been reimagined” — with melodies kept, but orchestration or instrumentation or harmonies different.
Compared with the original 2010 production, Brett Stewart described this as a “complete rewrite of the whole thing.” Although a lot of original melodies were maintained, Brandon Stewart said, “in many ways, it’s a completely new experience” — calling it “the fully realized version” of the original score from 15 years ago.
A family collaboration
In a day when many families grapple with tensions of many kinds, it’s striking to see three siblings working so closely as collaborators on a project of such magnitude.
“It is really interesting to watch them together, because they trust each other so much,” said Jenn Erickson, operations director for Millennial Choirs & Orchestras. “And they understand that the other person has their back and their best interest at heart, and so ... they’re able to hear each other differently because they trust that, the person is really trying to help them make it a better piece.”
“They complement each other very well. Once you get to know them, you find that they have different strengths, different weaknesses and they work together really well and enhance each other’s gifts and talents.”
Erickson describes watching the siblings send pieces back and forth sharing “it would just be better if you did this.” This kind of honesty, she believes, makes the music better, because they are not afraid to say to each other, “this sounds too much like this.”
A passion project
“This is what we call a passion project,” Ward said. “We felt really strongly about it and we are doing this because we believe in it.”
“We’re doing it to share the important message of 3rd Nephi with the world” — sometimes Brett Stewart and many members refer to as the “fifth gospel,” representing “the story of the central message of the Book of Mormon.”
During a time in his early teenage years when he sought to know for himself what he believed, Brett Stewart was told in a sacred blessing that his conviction about the Book of Mormon was “etched deep within me never to be erased” — and that he was “born with it.”
“When we talk about being the keystone of our faith, that’s what it is to me,” he said — calling it one part of the gospel that “that I look to and go. I cannot deny this. I cannot do it. … It’s actually too logical to me, and it makes too much sense to me, and life without it would not make enough sense to me.”
“When we invite the world to read the Book of Mormon,” Brandon Stewart added, “the first story we invite them to read is this story. And the reason why is because it is the pinnacle event of the entire book, and it is the best depiction, in my opinion, of who Christ is, as a person, as a soul, as a Savior, as a human, as a son — the Son of God, all these things. It depicts his characteristics and personality in a more potent way than I think most other scripture stories do in all of holy writ.”
“We’ve made great efforts to make sure that we are representing this story and all of the figures in the story in as accurate and respectful a way as possible,” he said. “Again, not trying to overdo the theatrics, but certainly not under doing it so that it’s monotone.”
“We feel that Christ was a very emotional being,” Brandon Stewart added. “He had so much compassion and so much passion for his cause. And we want that depicted through the music and the production.”
“Obviously, we’re depicting the destruction, the mass destruction, of an entire civilization. At the same time, we’re depicting Christ appearing post destruction, and the light that pierces through the darkness. And so it will definitely be dramatic, but it will also be very respectful and appropriate for what this story is. We really want to do it justice.”
“This production is just scripture and focused on the Lord and on his mission,” Erickson added. “We want to get something out there that really reflects what the Book of Mormon is teaching.”
For a choir typically focused on broader Christian themes, she described this as a stretch, “but we have felt really called to and compelled to have this out there in a way that shows the world what the Book of Mormon really is.”
Opens in new windowBarriers and opposition
Back in 2020, the organization, at this point in five states, began rehearsing the new production. Yet the pandemic pause came right as final revisions were underway — providing even more time in subsequent years for creative marination and additional developments, including adding the musical trio, GENTRI.
“Being immersed in this is such a unique experience” Ward said — something she called “incredible” and “also difficult.” She described “extreme opposition” that has come each time they’ve set out to do Messiah in America — to the point they’ve told their conductors, “be prepared” for unique challenges that will come up. “We have had to really work through that as a team.”
“I’ve had conductors call and say, ‘Kristi, I have had the worst week, with everything that could go wrong in my personal life go wrong. And I walked into that rehearsal and I just felt this calm come over the room, this peace that’s just undeniable,' as they sing the word straight from scripture.”
“As soon as you start singing, this shift happens,” she said. “We have seen incredible miracles unfold, and it’s just a testament of how badly this message needs to reach the world.”
Singing scripture
Many participants have told us “there feels like there’s a different spirit at the rehearsal” as they learn and read the music, Erickson said, “that they just are walking away feeling very full of that beauty of God’s love and the gospel.”
Ward reflected on their own “multi-faith, diverse choir” and they’re all singing in these Messiah in America productions. They love “being a part of something that is preaching Christ. We see it changing lives already in every rehearsal.”
Brett Stewart also described how many participants tell him, “Every time I open those scriptures, no longer do I read them, I sing them … It changes it forevermore.”
Current musical director for the production, Jodi Reed, also performed in the original. “It was life changing on so many levels. It’s some of the most precious parts of the Book of Mormon when the Savior came.”
“It’s sunk deep into my heart. It changed 3rd Nephi for me. There are parts of the text that I’ll remember until I’m 90, because it deepened my testimony of the Savior, and really personalized it.”
Many performers, said Reed, also one of the conductors for California and Kansas City, “know how precious these words are, and they’re kind of hungry for it.”
“To this day, when I approach several scriptures from 3rd Nephi, I sing them as I read them, because those melodies just don’t leave” Brandon Stewart also said. “Of course, even reading them alone is a powerful experience, and which is why that book has stood the test of time for over 200 years.”
Adding music, however, “highlights the emotion of the experience that we’re reading … that we’re singing about. It brings a deeper connection to the story, to the power of Christ in these moments.”
“We are seeing the fruits that are coming from thousands that are singing literally straight from scripture every single week in unison,” Ward said.
Patti Salisbury, part of the choir production team, described how unique it’s been to “go and be surrounded by the music and the message” on a regular basis. “Such a testimony builder for me,” she said.
The experience of preparing for Messiah in America has been a continual reminder for her about Christ coming to bless “the people who you know so desperately needed the Savior and his presence” — something “so easily overlooked” in the busyness and distraction.
“I’m very excited,” she said. “It’s going to change lives.”
The hearts and minds of youth
The production’s most important mission, Erickson said, “is to have these scriptures in the hearts and the minds of youth.”
She recalled carpooling youth from the chorus to and from high school; they would be singing portions of it and talking about what they learned that day. For choir participants, she said, “there’s so much in their minds with this beautiful and spiritual and uplifting ... there’s such power in pure scripture being in their brains.”
Many lives are going to be changed, “starting right with our own participants,” she said. “They’re building testimony on every concert hall stage.”
‘They shall know their redeemer’
Brett Stewart recounted a friend who came up to him after a performance of the earlier Messiah in America, saying, “I had no idea you people believe that about Jesus.”
He said he wants people to walk away learning something new. “Most people know the salacious, and they know the things that are being thrown at them in the media, and they may know basic ideas and doctrines … But most, even some of our friends, have no idea.”
Erickson remarked that “the world is just inundated with these negative perceptions of our culture — including another Book of Mormon musical that Brett Stewart says “actually has nothing to do with the story of the Book of Mormon. It has nothing to do with it,” he said. “They use the Book of Mormon as a prop.”
By comparison, “this is a pure representation of just the story and the scripture itself,” Brandon Stewart said. “I love that it offers something that is just purely scripture — purely the story. It’s not someone’s opinion of the story.”
Brett Stewart hopes the audience embraces the larger thematic messages of the production, that Jesus comes to the one, gathers all his sheep throughout the world, loves children and also blesses them one by one.
“And then shall they know their Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ” is where the whole production ends, he said. That’s what he most hopes people will leave with: “That they know their Redeemer and know that he knows them.”
“I cannot wait for the audience to see this,” Salisbury said, describing a prayer she has on her heart as she works preparing for the debut, “that the message will be received and that people will be touched.”
An estimated 32,000 people will see the production between March and May, across six different states, with more catching glimpses on social media. The creative team hopes to eventually see the production recorded so many more people can access it around the world, describing how many have messaged them from different countries asking when it will be filmed so they can see it.
“That would be my biggest dream,” Ward said, “to be able to get that to them, so this is accessible to the masses.”