Michael Ballam (born 1952) is the general director of the Utah Festival Opera, a professor of music at Utah State University, an accomplished operatic singer, pianist and oboist. His professional operatic and recital career has spanned nearly three decades and four continents. Ballam, a native of Logan, Utah, has performed in the major concert halls in America, Europe, Asia and the Soviet Union, with command performances at the Vatican and the White House. His operatic repertoire includes more than 600 performances of over 70 major roles. He has shared the stage with the world's greatest singers, including Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Plácido Domingo, performing regularly with companies such as the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas, St. Louis, Kennedy Center and San Diego Operas. At the age of 24 he became the youngest recipient of a Doctor of Music with Distinction in the history of Indiana University. He is well known for his strong support of musical arts in Cache Valley, Utah.Ballam has released music CDs of him singing with his children.He starred in the 1996 family movie Clubhouse Detectives about some children who set out to solve a neighborhood murder.Ballam is frequently asked to hold lectures nationwide 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. His lectures are highly popular.He also lectures on the relationship of music and the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he has been a lifelong member. The church created a position of "musical missionary-at-large" specifically for him.
$500,000
