Michael Lynn Ballam was born on August 21,1951 and is an American opera singer, educator, and arts administrator.
29 Facts About Michael Ballam
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Michael Ballam is the founding general director of Utah Festival Opera and a professor of music at Utah State University.
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Michael Ballam has served on the faculty of the Music Academy of the West, where he studied, and as a guest lecturer at Stanford, Yale, Catholic University, and Manhattan School of Music.
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Michael Ballam was born in Logan, Utah to Grant Lamb Ballam, a pharmacist, and his wife, Marianne Fullmer.
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Michael Ballam was raised in River Heights, a town adjacent to Logan.
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Michael Ballam attended Sky View High School in the neighboring town of Smithfield, where he was cast as Wang Ta in Flower Drum Song and Billy Bigelow in Carousel, among others.
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Michael Ballam continued to sing in musical theater productions and expanded his repertoire to include opera, oratorio, and concert recital works.
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At the age of 24, Michael Ballam became the youngest recipient of a Doctor of Music with Distinction in the history of Indiana University.
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Michael Ballam has performed with many national houses, including the San Francisco, Metropolitan, Houston Grand, Washington National, San Diego, and Michigan Operas.
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Michael Ballam premiered the role of Coyote in Mollicone's 1998 opera Coyote Tales.
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Michael Ballam has performed as a soloist at the White House and the Vatican.
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In 1987, Michael Ballam was performing La Traviata in Caracas when he suddenly lost his ability to sing.
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Michael Ballam returned to his home in New York City and visited his ENT.
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When Michael Ballam returned to Logan in 1987, he joined the music faculty of Utah State University.
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Michael Ballam was notified that the Capitol Theatre, where Ballam first performed as a child, was to be torn down to make room for a parking lot.
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Michael Ballam ran a successful, multi-million dollar campaign to save, restore, and expand the building, which had fallen into disrepair.
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In subsequent years, Michael Ballam has led the restoration and renovation projects of several other historic cultural landmarks in Logan, Utah, including the Utah Theatre and the Dansante Building.
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In 1992, Michael Ballam founded Utah Festival Opera, which presented its first season in the summer of 1993.
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Since its inception, Michael Ballam has stood as general director of the company, as well as one of its recurring performers.
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Michael Ballam is frequently asked to hold lectures worldwide on the creative arts, more specifically music, and their interaction with the functions of the mind, their use in enhancing education, and as sources of therapy and motivation.
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Michael Ballam currently serves on the Board of Directors of several professional arts organizations.
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Michael Ballam is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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Michael Ballam has written and lectured on the relationship between music and the doctrines of the Church.
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In 1999, Ballam sang "Panis Angelicus" by Cesar Franck at the funeral of his friend and supporter, influential LDS author and historian Leonard J Arrington.
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Michael Ballam's grandfather, Oral Michael Ballam, was a veteran in World War II.
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Michael Ballam was a public school administrator in Cache Valley before becoming a professor at USU in 1963.
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Michael Ballam's daughter, Vanessa, is a performer, stage director, and former Miss Utah.
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Michael Ballam is a theatre professor at Idaho State University and education director for Utah Festival Opera.
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Michael Ballam has four other children with his wife, Laurie.