Patrons and performers became one in Salt Lake City’s Abravanel Hall Monday night as they joined violinist Jenny Oaks Baker in singing the fourth verse of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.”
The song concludes Baker’s “The Redeemer: Music on the Life of Jesus the Christ” concert and is “the best moment” of the show, she told the Deseret News Monday.
To Baker, the concert is best described as a “big, giant worship session,” where “you’re bathed in the spirit.”
“It just feels like heaven. It feels as close to heaven as anywhere but the temple,” she said.
Along with Baker, the show featured Intermountain Choral Artists and Symphony Orchestra, cellist Sarah Noelle Sorhus and vocalists Dallyn Vail Bayles, Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller and Preston Yates.
The concert showcased Baker’s and composer Kurt Bestor’s 2022 “The Redeemer” album, which, an emotional Baker said, was inspired by the spirit.
“It was how my (Heavenly) Father wanted to send it to this earth, and I just get to be privileged enough to be a part of it,” she said.
Originally meant for the violin, orchestra and “a little bit of choir,” Baker said, the spirit told her, “This is supposed to become even bigger.”
Baker felt prompted to expand the program to “involve more choir, vocal soloists, additional cello and soloists, and a live narrator and Bible videos.”
“Little by little, the spirit has just brought every element to the forefront, and I’ve just been privileged enough to be a part of it,” she said.
Baker said she hoped the audience left Monday’s concert with “a stronger witness of Jesus Christ and a testimony of him and how he matters in their lives,” which both she and conductor Cory Mendenhall have experienced through their performances of the program.
“I feel the spirit so strongly as I play this. I’m so grateful for all the ways that it testifies of Jesus Christ and his life and mission and in such a beautifully profound and impactful way. It’s really strengthened my faith in Jesus Christ and helped keep me centered on him,” Baker said.
Mendenhall joined the production three years ago following the death of his mother, a time in his life where he said he needed to work on his faith. His involvement with “The Redeemer” allowed him to do see that Christ’s resurrection was more than a beautiful story, but a reality, he said.
“I saw it just witness that our faith has a real and lasting place in this story, that Jesus lives, that He is not just a scriptural account. The Savior lives,” Mendenhall said.
Baker believes she and the other performers are just vessels carrying a message and as such, at the beginning of the concert, asked the audience to hold their applause until the final songs before the intermission and the end of the concert.
“This isn’t about, you know, clap for me and let me take my bow here,” Baker said. “It’s really about the Savior, and he’s the headliner and we just get to be very blessed participants in worshipping him all together.”
Baker’s “The Redeemer” tour has three remaining stops in Nampa, Idaho, on Friday and in Cedar City, Utah, on April 6 and 7.
