Dr. Brady R. Allred has developed “an international reputation for excellence.” Under his direction the Salt Lake Choral Artists, a non-profit arts organization of seven choirs and over 300 singers, has achieved critical acclaim for their innovative concerts, Summer Choral Institute program, international tours, iTunes and YouTube channels. Dr. Allred was honored by The Salt Lake Tribune and named as one of Utah’s Top 25 Cultural Power Brokers. Known around the world for “exquisite choral singing,” Dr. Allred’s ensembles have been invited to participate in major festivals and competitions around the world. They won the Grand Prize at the Florilège Vocal de Tours (France), the European Grand Prix, and First Prizes at the Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition, the Tolosa (Spain) International Choir Competition, and the Concorso Polifonico Internazionale in Arezzo, Italy. He was also awarded the Conductor’s Prize in Marktoberdorf, Germany. The Salt Lake Vocal Artists represented the USA at the World Choral Symposium in Argentina and have recently toured to Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan. They were also featured performers at the American Choral Directors Association 2015 National Conference and the 2015 Festival Chor Biennale in Aachen, Germany

Prior to his full-time appointment as Artistic Director of SLCA, Dr. Allred was Professor of Music and Director of Choral Studies at the University of Utah. He was also the Music Director and Conductor for the Butler Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania, Director of Choral Activities at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and Artistic Director and Conductor of the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh. He has been a guest conductor for the Schumann Chamber Orchestra in Italy, the Wroclaw Philharmonic in Poland, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Vox Gaudiosa of Tokyo, the New Israeli Vocal Ensemble, Oslo Voices in Norway, the Taipei Youth Choir in Taiwan, and the National Youth Choirs of Sweden, Norway and Estonia at the Europa Cantat Festival in Hungary. He has performed with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers and the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus under Helmuth Rilling. He has served on international juries for competitions in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand and has conducted over one hundred regional and All-State Choirs. Dr. Allred earned his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting degrees from the Eastman School of Music, and his undergraduate degree in Theory/Composition and Flute Performance from Brigham Young University. He and his wife, soprano Carol Ann Allred, have traveled and performed extensively as Artistic Ambassadors for the United States Information Agency.

Since 2000, Josu Elberdin works as a Music teacher at the Musical School of Pasaia, and also works as an organist at Nuestra Señora del Carmen de Trintxerpe Church(Pasaia) since 1991. He frequently serves as a clinician for both children and adult choir conducting workshops, and He also acts as adjudicator at National and International choral and composition competitions.

Elberdin is worldly renowned for his compositions. He has won several composing awards and his works have been commissioned by prestigious choirs all over the world. He has also set compulsory scores for international choral contests such as the Tolosa International Choral Competition, Taipei International Choral Festival, Europa Cantat Junior, World Choral Simposium Argentina 2011 and Barcelona 2017, Quincena Musical de San Sebastián International Festival, Musikaste, and more.

Dan Forrest is widely recognized as one of the leading American choral composers of our time. He has been described as having “an undoubted gift for writing beautiful music….that is truly magical” (NY Concert Review), with works hailed as “magnificent, very cleverly constructed sound sculpture” (Classical Voice), and  “superb writing…full of spine-tingling moments” (Salt Lake Tribune). His music has sold millions of copies, has received numerous awards and distinctions, and has become well established in the repertoire of choirs around the world via commissions, festivals, recordings, radio/TV broadcasts, and premieres in prominent international venues.

Dan’s work ranges from small choral works to instrumental solo works, wind ensemble works, and extended multi-movement works for chorus and orchestra. His Requiem for the Living (2013) and Jubilate Deo (2016) have become standard choral/orchestral repertoire for ensembles around the world, with LUX (2018), the breath of life (2020), and CREATION (2023) also receiving critical acclaim.

Neylan McBaine is the author of three books and TEDx presenter, Neylan has been called a “uniquely important” “change agent” in Utah and within her faith. Drawing from foundational years as a marketer in Silicon Valley, Neylan brings a unique combination of audience awareness, clear communication and a sense of creative fun to her work in the non-profit, education and cause-oriented spaces. 

Since co-founding Better Days 2020, Neylan has been a leader in speaking and writing about women's leadership and the U.S. suffrage movement, with a specific focus on Utah and the west's early role in that movement. She developed a team of historians, educators and marketers that have changed the way Utahns view and understand women's history, leading to shifts in current perceptions of ourselves and Utahns generally. Neylan previously founded another non-profit, the Mormon Women Project, which changed the dialogue around Latter-day Saint women in significant ways. 

In 2020, Neylan was named “Extraordinary Woman” of the year by the YWCA of Utah, included in a Zions Bank mural of Utah Women in downtown Salt Lake City, and her book Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West won the Freedoms Foundation National Award. Neylan is a graduate of Yale University, mother to three daughters, and lives in Salt Lake City.

Dr. Daniel McDavitt is Director of Cadet Vocal Music at the United States Coast Guard Academy, where he oversees a vocal music program that includes four choral ensembles, a robust touring schedule, and a yearly musical production. Previous to this appointment, he was associate professor of music and director of the Goucher College Choirs and Orchestra, director of choral studies at Loyola University Maryland, and acting director of choirs at Knox College. He is also director of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus.

An award-winning composer and educator, Dr. McDavitt’s compositions and arrangements have been performed and broadcast throughout the United States and abroad. His music is published by Walton Music, E. C. Schirmer Publishing, Gentry Publications, and Jackman Music, along with a number of self-published works. He has received a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, won first prize in the Magnum Opus Composition Competition, and regularly accepts commissions from community, university, and school choral ensembles from around the country. 

He has also received numerous grants for music research and to promote new works by living composers. Dr. McDavitt is a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Collegiate Choral Organization, where he serves on the national board, as well as the College Music Society, and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

One of his generation’s most successful and versatile artists, tenor Stanford Olsen’s career spans more than 1,200 performances on five continents over the course of 30 years. Since his professional operatic debut there in 1986, opposite Dame Joan Sutherland in Bellini’s I Puritani, Stanford Olsen has performed more than 160 times with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Highly regarded for his interpretations of the bel canto roles, Olsen has been heard in this repertoire throughout the world at venues such as San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Miami Opera, La Scala di Milano, Landestheater Stuttgart, Theatre du Chatelet, Teatro Bellini di Catania, Theatre La Monnaie, Australian Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Nederlandse Oper, Tokyo Opera City, and most other significant opera companies in the USA and Europe. 

Since his professional concert debut as tenor soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1983, Stanford Olsen has performed with most of the world’s great orchestras, in repertoire from Bach to Bartok. He has been a frequent guest with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and most other major American orchestras. Outside the U.S., Olsen has often performed with the Berlin Philharmoniker, Concertgebouw, Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, L’Orchestre de Paris, L’Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, Israeli Philharmonic, Orchestre de Montréal, Oslo Symphony Orchestra, and Tokyo’s NHK Symphony. Olsen has performed and recorded with many of  the leading conductors of our time, such as Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, John-Eliot Gardner, Alan Gilbert, Carlos Kleiber, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Sir Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, Robert Shaw, and Michael Tilson-Thomas, among others. Olsen was declared First Place Winner of the 1989 Walter W. Naumburg Award for recitalists, the only tenor to do so in nearly 60 years.

A sought-after clinician and adjudicator, Stanford Olsen has been a frequent judge for the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions. He has given masterclasses to students at most of the country’s significant universities and conservatories, including CCM, Curtis, Eastman, Oberlin, Manhattan School of Music, Rice University, University of Illinois, University of Houston, USC, and dozens of others. He has also worked with the apprentices at the Tanglewood Festival, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Santa Fe Opera, Ravinia Festival, Cleveland Art Song Institute, the Aspen Music Festival, the Utah Opera, and the Metropolitan’s Lindemann Young Artist Program.

Dr. Lauren Adja Tian is a conductor and pianist who enjoys an eclectic career of performance, education and administrative leadership. She is the Music Director of the Utah Medical Orchestra, an orchestra based at the University of Utah whose members are healthcare professionals, staff and medical students. Lauren is also the Music Director of the Taylorsville Symphony Orchestra, a local collegiate and community orchestra, and serves as the Vice President and assistant conductor for Sinfonia Salt Lake, a professional chamber orchestra. As an academic, she coordinates projects for the University of Utah’s Arts and Health Innovation Lab, which supports interdepartmental initiatives between the College of Fine Arts, the School of Medicine and their hospital campuses. Prior to this, she served as the Arts Department Chair and Director of Ensembles at the Westover School, in Middlebury, Connecticut, and as the Director of Musical Activities at the Knox School, in NYC. During her years in NYC, she worked as an assistant conductor for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Singing City Choir. A passionate advocate for new music, Lauren has conducted many premieres, with performances by the ENA Ensemble, Opera Contempo, the Mostly Modern Festival Orchestra and the Eastman Composer’s Sinfonietta. Lauren has an extensive background in assistant work, covering conductors at the Brussels Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, London philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, among many others. She holds degrees in orchestral conducting from the University of Utah and the Eastman School of Music, piano performance degrees from Bowling Green State University and California State University, Fullerton, and also studied choral conducting and piano performance at the University of Michigan.