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It can't be easy to steal the show from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and its accompanying army of orchestra players, bell ringers, dancers and household-name guest stars. But every Christmas season, Richard Elliott does just that. Whether it's a frontier-flavored fantasia on "Deck the Halls," an ingenious mashup of "Good King Wenceslas" and the "Nutcracker" Suite, or a jaw-dropping display of pedal dexterity on "Go Tell It on the Mountain," Elliott's organ solos earn thunderous applause from the 21,000 fans who flock to the LDS Conference Center for the choir's seasonal spectaculars.
"Yes, he's a showman," former Tabernacle Choir music director Craig Jessop said of Elliott, the choir's principal organist. "But there's absolutely impeccable musical taste and execution behind it as well. I would rank him among the top organists in the world today."
Colleagues concur: The Crystal Cathedral's Frederick Swann called Elliott a "fine musician and gentleman," while Michael Barone, host of public radio's "Pipedreams" organ program, professed "nothing but admiration for the guy. I wish every organ community had someone of his ability, artistry and what seems to be unflagging energy."
"Rick is one of the most talented individuals I have ever been around," choir president Mac Christensen chimed in. "No one prepares the way he prepares."
Speaking of preparation, Elliott's famous fleet-footed arrangement of "Go Tell It on the Mountain" was born of necessity. An avid outdoor enthusiast, he suffered a career-threatening injury to his left arm in a 2008 camping accident. "So I made some lemonade," he said: He spent extra hours working on his pedal technique.
Elliott, who marks his 20th anniversary as a Mormon Tabernacle organist this month, will travel across the street for a guest appearance with the Utah Symphony this week. He will be featured in two works: the Poulenc Organ Concerto and Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3, nicknamed the "Organ Symphony." Elliott said he's lost track of the number of times he's played with the Utah Symphony, but this will be his fourth outing with the Saint-Saëns. He noted that both works have a bicentennial connection this year: The Poulenc was written for an instrument built by French organ luminary Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, born in 1811, and the Saint-Saëns was written in 1886 in memory of the recently departed Franz Liszt, also born in 1811.
Instead of the mighty Tabernacle Organ, Elliott will perform on a digital instrument from Heritage Church Organs of Orem; it's the same organ the Tabernacle Choir will take on its East Coast tour this summer.
"With digital organs, the technology has gotten to a point where it's a much closer experience to what you feel at a [traditional] console," he noted.
Elliott, 54, grew up in Baltimore in a household of music enthusiasts; his parents still are Baltimore Symphony subscribers. He started taking piano lessons at age 6 and began playing organ as a teenager at the request of the pastor of the Lutheran church his family attended. "It was a better job than fast food," Elliott said.
He continued organ studies at the Peabody Conservatory and Catholic University of America, reasoning that it would give him a solid musical background, but got more serious about it — and began considering it as a career — at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He was an assistant organist for Philadelphia's world-famous Wanamaker Department Store organ for three years while there.
He also played keyboards in a couple of locally prominent rock bands, but by his third year of college, he'd decided against rock music as a career.
"I was by far the youngest member of the band, and I was already seeing how hard the lifestyle was," he said. "I also had the sense that that kind of music helped people forget, but not solve, their problems. I wanted to help people deal with their problems. I feel that classical and sacred music have a way of inspiring and lifting us up." He noted with amusement that his bands were "both named for substances proscribed by the Word of Wisdom," the LDS Church's health code. They were Orange Wedge, which Elliott later learned is a variety of LSD, and Apricot Brandy.
Elliott began investigating the LDS Church while studying at the Curtis; he was baptized the week he graduated and soon decided to serve a mission for the church. (He was sent to Argentina.)
He met and married pianist Elizabeth Cox Ballantyne while a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. The couple moved West after graduation, when Elliott took a job on the organ faculty at Brigham Young University. "It felt like the Wild West," said Elliott, who had first visited the state shortly after joining the LDS Church. "But I loved what I saw. The people were wonderful, kind and very welcoming, and I'd never seen anything like the scenery." He was appointed to the Tabernacle Organ staff in 1991 after three years at BYU.
Elliott became principal organist at the Tabernacle when John Longhurst retired in 2007. He manages a staff that includes two other full-time and two part-time organists; the five of them share a full slate of twice-daily recitals in the Tabernacle and weekly broadcasts of "Music and the Spoken Word." They also accompany the choir on the LDS Church's twice-yearly General Conferences, which Elliott says is the duty that "weighs on us the most heavily, because of the import of it. We are there to support the messages; we don't want to detract from them in any way."
He also makes time for hiking and other weekly outings with Ballantyne and their two sons, ages 15 and 8. "We've had encounters with mountain lions, moose and rattlesnakes all right here in these canyons," he said.
And some Sundays, you can hear him playing the hymns at his LDS ward. His improvisatory postludes are "always very tasteful but very inventive," said Utah Symphony violist Christopher McKellar, a fellow ward member. "It makes you perk up your ears and smile."
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Piping up
P Mormon Tabernacle Organist Richard Elliott plays music of Poulenc and Saint-Saëns with the Utah Symphony and guest conductor Andrew Grams.
When • Friday and Saturday, May 6-7, at 8 p.m.
Where • Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $15 to $85 ($5 more day of show) at 801-355-ARTS, http://www.utahsymphony.org or the box office.