Broadway’s ‘Aladdin’ is thrilled to sing with the Tabernacle Choir — at last

It took him two decades, but Broadway star Michael Maliakel has finally one-upped his younger brother. He’s the featured singing star of this year’s Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert, long after he narrowly missed out on the chance to perform with the famed troupe when he was in high school.

“I’m a choir kid,” said Maliakel, the star of the New York production of Disney’s “Aladdin.” “My mom put me in the church choir when I was 8 years old. And I was hooked from then onwards.”

The New Jersey native attended the American Boychoir School in Princeton and toured with that group. “We played some really incredible venues around the world. And the Tabernacle Choir was the one that didn’t quite happen while I was there,” Maliakel said. He acknowledges he was jealous when, “sure enough,” his younger brother “got to sing with the Tabernacle Choir in the tabernacle the year after I graduated from the school. I just missed it. And I’ve been sore about it ever since.

“... But it only took me 20 years, and it happened,” Maliakel said, smiling.

Alongside narrator Lesley Nicol — best known for her role as the cook, Mrs. Patmore, on “Downton Abbey” — Maliakel is the soloist in this year’s Christmas concert, which will air on PBS a year from now. He said those TV specials “were a crucial part of Christmases in my family growing up,” introducing him to “role models … like Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald and Renee Fleming, and the singers that have inspired my career and my artistry. And, yeah, I mean, it is surreal to be a part of this and to be standing on that stage with this incredible musical entity.”

It’s also a change of pace from his regular job as Aladdin, a role he’s played for more than two years. “Eight shows a week, I fly a magic carpet over at the New Amsterdam Theatre,” Maliakel said. “And it’s a very physical show. We’re running around, and most of the singing happens when you’re fully out of breath, or dancing or sword fighting or whatever it might be. So that presents its own challenges. It’s nice to just stand still and sing some beautiful music.”

Plus, “We’ve got about 1,800 seats in our theater at the New Amsterdam, and this is just a little bit bigger.” (Downtown’s Conference Center seats 21,000; audiences are limited to 15,000 this year because of limited parking and ongoing construction at Temple Square.)

Both Maliakel and Nicol said it sort of took their breath away the first time they walked into the enormous Salt Lake City venue. But, Nicol said, the size of the audience was “not an issue” during Thursday’s performance.

“It didn’t feel overwhelming. Strangely, it doesn’t. This is very odd,” Nicol said. “It’s strangely intimate. I don’t know how that could be. But it is.”

(There are two additional performances, on Friday and Saturday night, but the free tickets have long since been claimed.)

Although Maliakel “grew up with the Tabernacle Choir,” Nicol came to an appreciation of the choir and its music later in life. She said she “didn’t really know the Tabernacle Choir when I was younger. Of course, I knew who they were. But only when I was asked to join [the performance] this year did I start really delving in and listening to them and became an über superfan very quickly.”

Maliakel gushed about how much he was enjoying the opportunity to sing with The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, adding that he also sees it as a “really huge … responsibility.” As he does with is role in “Aladdin.”

“I feel really blessed to get to do both of them,” he said, “and to be able to present music that speaks to so many people is really important to me — to be able to represent people that look like me that might not have as much exposure on these stages.”

(He is the son of immigrants who moved to the United States from India in the 1980s.)

“‘Aladdin’ is a beloved musical score. Alan Menken is one of the greatest gifts to songwriting, and to get to sing that score every night is a real privilege,” Maliakel said. “But there’s nothing like Christmas music.”

Both performers also praised the Tabernacle Choir and its staff for making them feel welcome.

“I can’t think of another performance opportunity where I felt more taken care of,” Nicol said. “I mean, every aspect of this enormous production has the most attentive, generous eyes on it. And every single thing has been taken care of, every detail tended to, and so meticulously and so respectfully. And so, yes, I mean, the hospitality has been off the charts.”

Nicol is the second member of the “Downton Abbey” cast to serve as narrator of this Christmas program after the 2017 performance by Hugh Bonneville (who starred as Robert Crowley, the Earl of Grantham).

“He said, ‘You’ve got to do this. … This is off the scales,’” Nicol said. “‘You will never do anything like this in your career.’”