Nominees of the 2007 Pearl Awards gathered Friday at Brigham Young University hoping for a good meal and an award to take home.

With 37 categories, several people had both wishes granted. But going up against heavy hitters like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Jon Schmidt and Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband left many empty-handed.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir had six nominations and a few artists, whether lesser known or just with fewer members, managed to edge them out. Cherie Call won multiple awards, including "Holiday Album of the Year" ahead of both the choir and Gladys Knight & Saints Unified Voices.

However, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir & Orchestra did win the category that seemed to be made for the group, "Sacred Album of the Year."

In an effort to keep the ceremony short, speeches by the winners were outlawed in lieu of performances.

"No speeches, that's kind of good, yeahfi" asked Jenny Jordan Frogley as she began her performance of "Peacegiver."

Although no speeches were made, some of the performers also won an award, such as Frogley's "Peacegiver," which won "Contemporary Inspirational Recorded Song of the Year."

As part of the Faith Centered Music Association's three-part mission of education, service and public relations, this year's event included the generation of a new scholarship for students studying music.

The organization also adopted the Liz Shropshire Foundation, which provides services in Kosovo, Northern Ireland and Uganda teaching children music.

A video was shown of children in war-torn Kosovo singing songs in Albanian and former child soldiers in Uganda playing pennywhistles.

The audience laughed as the video cut from Albanian children singing to Irish children singing and doing hand motions to "Popcorn Popping."

"I looked out the window and what did I see, popcorn popping on the apricot tree," sang the Kosovo children in heavily accented English.

As part of the service aspect of FCMA, Madsen said they will serve with the Shropshire Foundation and help to get money and instrument donations for the program.

The Pearl Awards began in 1998 in Salt Lake City. The Grammy-like event is put on by the FCMA.

Earl Madsen, director of media and public relations for FCMA, said the group is comprised of anyone who is interested in faith-centered music. He said, however, most of the members are Mormon.

"I would say the majority of them are [LDS], but it is not limited to them," he said. "The group is made up of people who are not all LDS. You'll find that generally the majority of the submissions and nominees are LDS artists."

Madsen said the main reason the awards go to so many LDS artists is because most of the inspirational music is produced by them. While there are many Christian rock groups of other faiths, Madsen said that genre had not found its way into the market in Utah.

"You don't find a lot of alternative rock or heavy metal," he said. "Within this marketplace, they don't seem to have as many who are producing it. The market here hasn't embraced that, so you don't find it here."

Madsen said nominees are chosen after they submit their work in a given category. An FCMA committee then looks through the material and picks the five nominees in each category.

Winners in each category are chosen by voting members of FCMA, who voted this year in an online ballot.

"To be a voting member, it has to be that you're working part time or full time at the professional level within the music community," Madsen said. "Anybody who is a voting member can vote."

The ceremonies have had several locations since the inaugural celebration, including Cottonwood High School in Salt Lake City and the McKay Events Center in Orem.

In previous years, the large venues have made it possible for artists to bring friends and family members, often generating 700 to 800 people, Madsen said.

This year marks the third time the event has been held at BYU, as board members have decided to scale it down to a smaller level, he said. Although the large size was fun, he said, FCMA is a nonprofit organization and is made up entirely of volunteers.

"It's varied from year to year," Madsen said. "At one point the show was formatted very much like a Hollywood-produced event. Kind of like a gala event, it was broadcast on local TV. The last several years the focus has been a little bit more on making it a more intimate event."