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The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square is shown during its recent trip to Mexico.

Courtesy Intellectual Reserve

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Michael Maliakel will be a guest artist for the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, with performances Dec. 14-16, 2023.

Courtesy Jiyeng Chen

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Lesley Nicol will be a guest artist for the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, with performances Dec. 14-16, 2023.

Courtesy Ruth Crafer

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Broadway’s Michael Maliakel (“Aladdin”) and actor Lesley Nicol (“Downton Abbey”) will join the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square as the featured guest artists for this year’s Christmas concerts on Dec. 14, 15, and 16, at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City.

Tickets to this year’s Christmas concert are complimentary but required. Tickets will be distributed through a random selection process and have been increased to four tickets per household, though they are limited because of construction around Temple Square.

Tickets can be requested by signing up during the registration period, running from noon Oct. 24 through 11:59 p.m. Nov. 3. For full details, visit tabchoir.org/Christmastickets. The performances will be open to anyone ages 8 and up.

The concerts are under the direction of Mack Wilberg, music director of the choir, and Ryan Murphy, associate music director.

“We are delighted to have the talents of Michael Malaikel and Lesley Nicol at this year’s Christmas concerts,” Wilberg said in a news release. “Together they will bring the holiday spirit into the hearts of our audiences through music and word celebrating the joy that is found in family and the celebration of the Savior’s birth.”

Maliakel, an award-winning Indian-American actor and singer, is currently starring in the title role in Disney’s “Aladdin” on Broadway. He recently was featured in two PBS concert specials: “Broadway’s Brightest Lights” with Megan Hilty and “An Evening with Lerner and Loewe.”

He recently made his Kennedy Center debut in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” starring Tony Award-winner Stephanie Block, according to the release. Prior to the pandemic, he toured North America with the 25th anniversary production of “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Nicol’s diverse career has included appearances on Broadway, the West End, in movies and television. Her TV career in the U.K. encompasses both drama and comedy, including roles in shows like “Blackadder,” “Shameless,” “Inspector George Gently,” “Hancock and Joan” and “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” She played Mrs. Patmore in the popular “Downton Abbey” for six years and in both feature films.

Her film work includes “East Is East” and the sequel, “West Is West.” She has just completed filming “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office,” a new series for ITV to be released in 2024. Last year, Nicol produced a new one-woman show with American songwriter Mark Mueller, which opened in Chicago and New York.

Tickets will not be required for the 30-minute weekly Music & the Spoken Word broadcast on Dec. 17 following the concerts. Both guest artists are scheduled to perform on the broadcast.

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