Tabernacle Choir Performs in Brazil

In late May the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will perform in Brazil in a benefit concert series for the new Research Center for the Study of the Problem of Abandoned Children. The Research Center is to be established at the Mackenzie Institute in São Paulo under an agreement signed by the institute and Partners of the Americas in July 1980. Its purpose is to deal with the serious problem of parents “untrained in the skills needed for employment or survival in metropolitan areas” who abandon their children.

Estimates of the number of abandoned children range up to 80 million in all of Latin America, including an estimated two million abandoned in Brazil plus an additional 14 million who live in slums with no practical parental supervision or material support.

For the choir, this will be its first South American tour, and it will be featured in Brazil’s first Week of Music of the Americas, according to Choir President Oakley S. Evans. The event will bring together famous performers of classical, popular, and folk music from North and South America.

The tentative schedule includes a satellite transmission of a broadcast, participation in the week’s gala opening ceremonies on May 24, concerts in the 12,000-seat Ibirapuera Auditorium in São Paulo on May 25–27, with additional concerts under consideration for Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Asuncion, Paraguay.

Partners of the Americas is a voluntary people-to-people organization with eighty-eight committees throughout the United States and Latin America.