Vocal Works

M. RYAN TAYLOR, BIOGRAPHYSUMMARY

M. Ryan Taylor has written operas two produced operas, ABINADI and THE OTHER WISE MAN, as well as dozens of choral works, art songs, song cycles, pop songs, children’s songs, hymns, and other works of chamber music. In addition to his musical works, he has penned two short fiction books (AIYA SEVEN and NATIVITY), a number of collections of poetry as well as lyrics for many of his own songs. Among other things, he is also a hiker, recipe hacker, multi-media artist, choral conductor, performing baritone vocalist, ukulele/tuba/trumpet/euphonium/piano/recorder/pennywhistle and once-upon-a-time bassoon player, son, friend, husband, father, sci-fi and Tolkien fan, book-lover, hymn-arranger, gardener, church organist, some-time animator, party-thrower, concert-producer, web-builder, collector of musical toys and oddities ... These are some of the things that inform and shape his music.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Music, emphasis vocal performance, Brigham Young University (2000)

Master of Music, emphasis composition, Brigham Young University (2002)

Conducting teachers include Mack Wilberg, Ronald Staheli, and Zsuzsanna Mindszenty.

Composition teachers include David Sargent, Stephen Jones, Murray Boren and Michael Hicks.

CHORAL WORKS & CONDUCTING

His choral compositions, available at CHOIRWORKS.COM, have been performed across the globe, and are influenced by his vocal training and extensive experience as a choral conductor. He was the conductor and artistic director for The American Fork Children’s Choir for ten years, during which time he became a Kodaly-certified developmental music education specialist through the Intermuse program at Brigham Young University. He also has served as the associate conductor for the Timpanogos Chorale. Other experience includes conducting the American Fork Hillcrest Stake Choir for seven years, various congregational choirs from 1990-2009, the Phoenix Rising Chamber Choir, as well as a student conductor for Fountain Valley High School in 1989-90. He has sung in a number of highly skilled choral organizations including the Phoenix Rising Chamber Choir, Timpanogos Chorale, BYU Concert Choir, Chapman College Chamber Singers, St. Wilfred’s Episcopal Choir, St. James Episcopal Choir, Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Choir, Orange County Youth Choir, Orange County Honor Choir, FVHS Troubadours and FVHS Concert Choir.

COMMUNITY

In service, Taylor was one of the co-founders of the The Salty Cricket Composers Collective in Salt Lake City which is dedicated to performing concert works by composers residing in Utah. At one time he also produced the Utah Mid-Winter Song Festival in conjunction with the American Fork Arts Council (now the Timpanogos Arts Foundation), as well as teamed with his wife Dixie to coordinate American Fork’s Concerts in the Park series for three years.

OPERA & MUSICAL THEATER

His first opera, ABINADI, was premiered, filmed and broadcast by Brigham Young University in 2003. He then self-produced, directed and performed in his second opera, THE OTHER WISE MAN (a chamber opera in one-act, based on the story by Henry Van Dyke), in 2006 and 2007. In 2013 Taylor began working on co-writing a number of songs for Mark Stoddard’s STRANGERS IN NAUVOO musical which premiered in 2014.

ART SONG

Most recently, in 2019, Taylor set Seven Shakespeare Songs to music and premiered these at a concert of the Salty Cricket Composer Collective in Salt Lake City with a renaissance-era four-course guitar in hand. A piano/vocal version of the Shakespeare songs was premiered with pianist Heidi Rodeback in 2020 at If Music Be the Food of Love. Earlier, he collaborated with The American Fork Arts Council Press to set poems by 10 living Utah-based poets to music; the result was a set of songs entitled, 3 Floors to the Grass. Other song cycle premieres include the Moon Songs on poems of Vachel Lindsay (winner of the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Composition Contest) by soprano Heather Chipman and pianist Dwight Bigler, A Light that Shames the Noonday Sun at the BYU 200th birthday celebration of Joseph Smith Jr. by tenor Lawrence Vincent and pianist Scott Holden, and All Heaven and it was One Hour Old (based on the Christmas poetry of Katherine Tynan) by soprano Venicia Wilson and pianist Lynn Jemison-Keisker. Taylor still has ambitions to premiere and record Leafs from the Diary of an Old Soul, settings of the poetry of George MacDonald, whose writings influenced C.S. Lewis and others.

VOCALIST

As a baritone vocalist , Taylor has performed leading roles in Cosi Fan Tutti, Tartuffe, The Merry Wives of Windsor, as well as his own operas Abinadi and The Other Wise Man. In musical theater, he most recently performed as Rev. Shaw Moore in a 2010 production of Footloose. Taylor was a featured singer at the Aaron Copland 100th Birthday Celebration at BYU, and has performed/championed the work of other living composers at the Utah Mid-Winter Song Festival as well as concerts of The Salty Cricket Composers Collective. He has soloed with The American Fork Symphony, Utah Premiere Brass, Utah/Idaho Performing Arts Company, Draper Historic Theatre and the Timpanogos Chorale as well as at various private and community gatherings (Pony Express Days, Colonial Days, Utah State Fair, Freedom Festival, etc.).

RECORDINGS

Taylor’s discography includes the Christmas-themed EP All Heaven and it was One Hour Old, featuring soprano Venicia Wilson and pianist Lynn Jemison-Keisker as well as two solo albums, American Revolutions and the children’s album Thirteen for Halloween. He has recorded many other songs, many of which can be accessed on his YouTube channels.

UKULELE

Taylor founded the Utah Uke Fest in 2012 (Utah’s first ukulele festival) and continued to organize it on a yearly basis for a full decade. He also started a ukulele ensemble, The Happy Valley Ukes (formerly UFO HUM), a service group for intermediate ukulele players that performed for local audiences and area rest homes. He’s taught hundreds of children, teens, adults and seniors how to play the ukulele through his Ukulele Bootcamp workshops and is the author of many ukulele books and materials which are available through UkulelePlay.com.