Michael Ballam: Utah tenor's career comes full circle

He once visited an elderly lady in a rest home who was suffering from Alzheimer's. She was incoherent and remote most of the time, but when Ballam showed up to sing for her she was talkative and animated. And when he was gone she returned to her lost world.

"I've seen people absolutely speak and sing for the first time in years," says Laurie.

"It can't be just any music, it has to be something so strong on their hard drive, something meaningful to them," Ballam explains. "It's the music that brings them out of it, not me."

"He's more than an entertainer," says President Thomas S. Monson of the LDS Church's First Presidency. "He's got a heart of gold. He does it quietly. He doesn't make a show of it. He believes in music and goodness."

Ballam gave President Monson the hospital-room concert a few years ago when the latter was hospitalized during the Christmas season, and later did the same for President Monson's wife, Frances.

"It was beautiful," says President Monson. "And he left a tape with his music on it that we played for her."

Ballam's life is music. It colors every facet of his life, right down to his license plate: TENOR. The first thing he does each morning at 5:30 sharp is watch opera on video as he works out on the treadmill. He calls the piano his "best friend" and says, "If I can't get my hands on a keyboard fairly regularly I'd go crazy."

For a decade the 50-year-old Ballam indulged his passion as a full-time opera singer, performing throughout the United States and Europe — San Francisco, New York, Washington, Boston, London, Paris, Florence, Copenhagen, Yalta, Russia, Odessa, Istanbul, plus a command performance for the pope in the Vatican.

Ballam has recorded 47 albums (including a Christmas album released this month), given more than 600 performances and played more than 70 major roles. He was Hoffmann in the "Tales of Hoffmann," Don Jose in "Carmen," the Duke in "Rigoletto," Rodolfo in "La Boheme," Pinkerton in "Madame Butterfly" and the Coyote in "Coyote Tales."

But since returning to Logan some 15 years ago, his singing career has gradually given way to a wider variety of things. He seems to show up everywhere — videos, CDs, TV, singing at ground zero in New York, singing at LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley's 90th birthday, singing in hospitals and prisons, doing speaking engagements, flying around the country to perform or to carry out some other errand in the name of music.

"He never seems to wind down," says Ballam's friend and admirer, Sen. Orrin Hatch.