Michael Ballam says music offers healing, hope

Intermountain Catholic

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Michael Ballam sings songs he feels convey a strong message of healing and hope. He is completely at ease playing a role, singing before large audiences, or at the bedside of a terminally ill patient.IC photo by Christine Young

SALT LAKE CITY — The audience showed they thoroughly enjoyed Michael Ballam’s performance with a standing ovation as the Madeleine Festival of the Arts and Humanities continued May 24.

Ballam performed "Thanks for the Music in Me," as an encore.

And many thank Ballam for the music in him. It was evident in the stories he told in his combination lecture, that was more like a conversation, on the incredible power that music has to heal us, to help us deal with challenge, and to enlighten us in our journey on this earth. As well as the several songs he sang during his performance as examples of music he feels convey a strong message of healing and hope. Ballam encouraged the audience to remember to rely on music’s incredible healing power when you or your loved ones face life’s many challenges.

Ballam serves as general director of the Utah Festival Opera, a company he founded in 1993. It has become one of the nation’s major summer festivals, with growing national acclaim.

Ballam has had an operatic and recital career spanning four decades across seven continents. A native of Logan, he has performed in the major concert halls of America, Europe, Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, with command performances at the Vatican and the White House.

His operatic repertoire includes more than 600 performances of more than 70 major roles. He has shared the stage with the world’s greatest singers, including Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa, Birgit Nilsson, Beverly Sills, and Placido Domingo, performing regularly with such companies as the Chicago Lyric, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Dallas, Washington, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Diego Operas.

But with all of Ballam’s professional and academic achievements, he is most comfortable at the bedside of a ill or terminally ill patient singing a favorite melody of hope, or volunteering in the classroom enlightening children to the magic and wonder of Mozart and Beethoven.

Ballam began his singing career at age 5 when his grandmother took him to a rest home to visit his Aunt Mary. She first took him to Aunt Mary’s house to see her garden, which had not been tended in years. She asked him if he could see the garden to which he replied no. She told him to close his eyes and use his eye of imagination.

"My grandmother told me my Aunt Mary loved this garden very much and I was going to take her the sunshine," said Ballam. "I wondered how, and she said just by being you. You see children carry sunshine with them.

"We went to the Sunshine Terrace and my grandmother brought her some trinkets and I wanted to give her a present, but I didn’t have one. Then I realized, I had one in my heart. I had just seen the movie "With a Song in My Heart," with my other grandmother. I asked if I could sing her a song.

"My grandmother placed me up on a table. That was my first stage, and I have never climbed down," said Ballam. "When I finished singing, Mary was smiling and tears were streaming out of her eyes. There was something I recognized that got stuck in my heart, something that has never gone away – the desire to use music to bless people’s lives.

"That is what I have done now for 52 years," said Ballam. "I think music has a far greater power than just entertainment. Music lifts a religious service to a glorious place, it can add to a wonderful experience on the stage, and it can heal people. I began to see that at the age of 5, and I wanted to know more about that. So I began going to rest homes as a little kid, and then on for years. I am still going to rest homes. I have had some extraordinary experiences there.

"It makes me feel good, and like I was thanking Him for the gift he gives to all of us," said Ballam.

One day Ballam was at a rest home and Sam, who had a form of autism, began to sing along with Ballam. Then same began to clap. Sam was in his mid to late 80s.

"Sam how do you know that song?" asked Ballam. "Sam said when I was 19 years old, I went on a mission for my church to Germany. Some how that song unlocked something in Sam. Pretty soon Sam went home.

Ballam, with music, also got through to a woman who had developed both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. He said she was like a stone. She could not blink, walk, talk, or swallow. But she would move if someone sang to her. It was amazing. She needed organization in her brain.

"The music had the power to link things back together again because music has more order than anything in the universe," said Ballam. "Its time has space held together, stopped and divided into equal parts. Music has great power.

Ballam said music can help you deal with pain as he told the story of Wanda. She was terminally ill and in constant pain even in her sleep. He woke her to sing her a song. They had a song fest, her brow unfurled and for the time she did not feel the pain. She asked him to sing a song he didn’t know, but he said he would learn it and come back tomorrow. But she died that evening, so he sang it at her funeral.

Ballam spoke of many more experiences, but the one that has changed his life the most is his son Ben.

"Ben has been a wonderful dream for us," said Ballam. "But when Ben was born he had Spina Bifida. He had many surgeries, and I figured if God could part the Red Sea, doctors could fix a spine.

"Ben would have the power to shape our family to who we really should be," said Ballam. "When he was born, there was a healing, not for Ben, but for me. I could accept it. My prayer, Thy will be done.

"The doctors warned us that he would score low in the spatial reasoning test, but Ben scored high," said Ballam. "Ben plays the piano. His spacial reasoning is in his fingers. He walks with his fingers.

"We wanted to go to Italy more than anything. We were on the flight, ready to land, when the pilot said we would be landing in Holland," said Ballam. "I was furious. "But when we got off the plane and saw the tulips, it was beautiful. Ben has taken us more beautiful places than we could have ever imagined."