Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir to perform at Inauguration - Fox 2 News Headlines

Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir to perform at Inauguration

ANNA KOOIMAN | Fox News

As President Barack Obama gears up to re-take the oath of office in Washington, three hundred singers are fine tuning their harmonies in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir founder Carol Cymbala led the group as it practiced its own gospel rendition to the classic "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The choir will be performing the fresh tune before an estimated half a million people at Monday's inauguration.

"We didn't veer away too much from the original but but it's different," Cymbala said.

Long before the presidential election was even decided, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer approached the choir and asked them to lend their voices to the 57th Inauguration.

"To be able to step outside of our community and go and be in a national or really an international stage is something that's really very exciting," said singer Ester Colon, who has been with the choir for 36 years.

The group has a long legacy: six Grammy Awards, seven Dove Awards, and more than four million albums sold.

They've performed on many big stages like Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden. But nothing compares to singing for the commander in chief.

This is the only the seventh time in U.S. history the constitutionally mandated inauguration date has fallen on a Sunday. And while the choir is well accustomed to giving praise on the Sabbath, the singers say that singing on the National Mall on a Monday will do just fine.

"We're really praying that we won't be seen so much as the message of the songs that we sing that day will be heard," Colon said.