Meet the speakers

Benjamin Dean Taylor is an award-winning composer of contemporary concert music. His energetic, adventurous music provides a uniquely refreshing sonic experience for performers and audiences alike. Trained as a trumpet player and pianist, he performs with and writes music for a variety of chamber ensembles, orchestras, jazz combos and big bands, wind bands, and choirs. Taylor is one of the few living composers today making his primary income from commissions and self-publishing his music. In addition to these core activities, he enjoys a diversified career including leading seminars for music educators, providing clinics for ensembles, performing with his Dixieland Jazz Band, teaching private lessons, leading community bucket drumming groups, and performing at local retirement communities with his kids as the “Taylor Family Band.” Passionate about inspiring the rising generation of composers, he is the founder and executive director of Music Creators Academy and serves as the Program Director for the Indiana University Jacobs Composition Academy.

Taylor has received professional commissions from individuals and ensembles all over the world including the Calidore String Quartet, Omaha Symphony, Solaire Saxophone Quartet, New World Youth Symphony, as well as over 200 wind band directors of players at all educational levels. He received his doctorate degree from Indiana University and currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana with his wife and seven children. When not composing, Taylor can be found wrestling with his kids, running ultramarathons, hiking, backpacking, cooking, and doing insane burpee routines.

Brian Kershisnik is the youngest of a happy and widely traveled family of sons. His father’s work as a petroleum geologist took them to various continents across the globe where his mother unfailingly set up a home filled with music, great food and active conversation, furnished with treasures and artifacts from their travels and hosting frequent parties and exotic slide shows of their globetrotting family life. Brian grew up happily dividing his time between his dad’s overseas assignments and summers spent with cousins in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a friendly, curious kid and with no notion at all of what he wanted to be when he grew up. Though he drew often to entertain himself, it never occurred to him that people actually did that for a living. Finding himself unceremoniously graduated from high school after an emergency evacuation from Pakistan abruptly ended his senior year, he applied to the University of Utah where his brother was attending school. A General Architecture class from Peter Goss and a ceramics class from Dorthy Bearnsen began to focus his interests. After serving as a missionary in Northern Europe he determined to study ceramics at Brigham Young University and then architecture at the University of Utah. During his first year in ceramics he met Joe and Lee Bennion and arranged to spend the summer working in Joe’s pottery studio. After some months it became apparent that Brian was no potter and Lee suggested he try something with her paint box. Painting changed everything. Gallery owner Dolores Chase noticed his exhibitions and offered to begin his professional career. While based in Utah, Brian is reaching ever-widening audiences with the expansion of a national base of collectors and shows, as well as works featured in collections around the world. However widely he wanders, his yearly openings at David Ericson Fine Art in Salt Lake City and Meyer Gallery in Park City always have an air of reunion and camaraderie. His studio practice shifts between monastic solitude in his rural Kanosh studio and communal busy-ness in his Provo studio. He now lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Faith, and their dog.

Nestled in a beautiful studio in the Swiss Alps, Christian Bolt passionately creates classical sculpture and painting, chipping away at marble imported from Italy (the same quarry Michaelangelo sourced from, in fact). He says his philosophy is the same for both art and life: “to learn a lot and never get held captive by it.

Emry Wride, based in NYC, just finished her second season as a Radio City Rockette. Originally from Utah, she graduated from BYU with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and performed as a Cougarette for 4 years and was captain for 3. Emry also danced with BYU’s Contemporary Dance Theatre and professionally with Odyssey Dance Theatre. In her high school years, she was Miss Teen Drill Utah, NYCDA’s college scholarship winner and Outstanding Dancer. Emry is a passionate dance educator and hopes to share her vast knowledge with aspiring dancers.

Georgina Bringas' art and installations explore the interplay of time and space that make intangible concepts tangible. Her work frequently reflects on spiritual themes.

Glen Nelson is an American author, scholar, curator, librettist, and non-profit arts executive living and working in New York City. He is the author of: 34 books; 137 essays, articles, and interviews; 22 works of fiction, theater, and poetry; the librettist of 8 operas and 22 choral works, art songs, and hymns. As a ghostwriter, three of his books have become nonfiction New York Times bestsellers. He curated the museum exhibition, John Held, Jr. (Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 2024) and three gallery exhibitions, each with an accompanying exhibition catalog. His most recent book is John Held, Jr.’s Fiction (Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, 2022). His latest recording, with composer Ethan Wickman, is the oratorio, To a Village Called Emmaus (American Festival Orchestra and Chorus, 2023), and his most recent opera, with Grammy Award-winning composer Lansing McLoskey, is The Captivity of Hannah Duston (Guerilla Opera, 2021), recipient of a 2024 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. He is a contributing author to Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader (Oxford University Press, 2024) and The Difficult Part, Brian Kershisnik: A Mid-career Retrospective (BYU MOA, 2024).

Born into royal lineage in Huambo, Angola and raised in Porto, Portugal, Hildebrando de Melo joined the LDS church as a child. Never trained in a paintbrush, he uses a paint palette to create pieces inspired by his own experiences, including witnessing his home country torn by war. “My paintings are hungry,” he says. “They feed on disease, natural disasters, and God.”

Justin Wheatley was born and raised in Clinton, Utah. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Utah State University with an emphasis in drawing and painting, and a Masters of Arts from National University, with a specialization in National Board Leadership. His work is influenced by his love for nature and architecture. Justin currently resides in Salt Lake City with his wife and four daughters.

Justin is represented by galleries across the country and has work in the collections of the Springville Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Marriott International, Royal Caribbean, Salt Lake County, the University of Utah, the LDS Church, and Utah Arts and Museums.

Kasuko Covington is quilt artist whose intricate textiles articulate a fine line that encompasses both fine art and folk art. The artist is drawn to things that “have a sense of history,” like the vintage fabric from traditional marriage kimonos. In her creations, she pieces together symbols from the most important parts of herself: Japanese culture, the restored gospel, and her own ancestry.

Keely Song Glenn is an Associate Professor of Dance at Brigham Young University and a Certified Laban Movement Analyst. She received her MFA in dance from The University of Iowa and was awarded the prestigious Dean’s Graduate Fellowship. Previously, she graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy and after high school received her B.A. in dance education from Brigham Young University.

While in Ohio, Ms. Glenn was the recipient of the Individual Arts Excellence Award in Choreography presented by the Ohio Arts Council and the Gravity’s Ripple III Choreographic Residency Award sponsored by the Dublin Arts Council and OhioDance. She was also the recipient of three Greater Columbus Arts Councils Artists Grants and a dance educator with Balletmet.

As an independent movement designer she plays with the idea of the absurd and the familiar to create accessible works for the child and the adult. She is a technical fusionist blending various, classical, street, and nature stylization into her choreography. Her passion for the arts and her family is currently leading her to explore new ways of integrating the natural landscapes of Utah and advancements in technology to create alternative kinesthetic and visual experiences.

Lance is a multitalented innovator, producer, award-winning composer, an FMOD expert & educator, a mentor, and an entrepreneur in the world of blind-accessible entertainment.
As a known fanatic & advocate for the use of audio/haptics middleware for games, he was recruited by Meta to educate the public on the creation and philosophy of haptics for interactive experiences, using their new tool Meta Haptics Studio.
Lance is the 2011 winner of the College Television Awards (aka, the ""Student Emmy"") in Music Composition. He is also a winner of the SEAMUS Commission award for his work in electroacoustic composition.

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics, religion, and national affairs. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney published by Scribner in 2023, and The Wilderness, a 2015 book about the battle for the future of the Republican Party. A former visiting fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Coppins has won the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency and the Wilbur Award for religion journalism. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and children.

Melissa Leilani Larson (she/her) is a mixed-race Filipino American writer from Salt Lake City. Upcoming productions include THE GIRL WHO DRANK THE MOON at Stages Theatre Co., PERSUASION at Michigan State University, GIN MUMMY at the University of South Florida, and two new commissions: THE BOX-CAR CHILDREN for Creekside Theatre Fest and SNAIL MAIL for Plan-B Theatre. Recent productions: PERSUASION at Snow College; LITTLE HAPPY SECRETS at Middle Tennessee State; THE EDIBLE COMPLEX at Wayne Theatre (tour); PRIDE AND PREJUDICE at Grand Theatre Co., and Texas Shakes; BITTER LEMON at Plan-B Theatre; GIN MUMMY at Utah Valley University; and THE POST OFFICE at schools across the country. Film work includes JANE AND EMMA and FREETOWN and the shorts “Patience” and “Iscariot.” She was a contributing writer on SAINTS. Select honors: AATE Distinguished Play Award; Bay Area Playwrights Festival finalist; O’Neill semi-finalist; IRAM Best New Play Award; Mayhew Award; four AML Drama Awards. In 2018, Mel received the AML Smith-Pettit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters for her body of work. Mel is a member of the Plan-B Theatre Lab, Honor Roll!, and the Dramatists Guild. MFA, Iowa Playwrights Workshop. melissaleilanilarson.com

Gathering all kinds of materials and giving room to multiple formal solutions, media and work procedures, Ricardo Rendón’s work functions as a complex diary where the actions are recorded, documented and accumulated in the transformation and manipulation of the materials and the working place.

Richard Olagunju is an artist and university teacher known for his vibrant works in the traditional Yoruban style of beadwork. Upon closer inspection, those tiny beads contain much more than meets the eye. The artist makes thoughtful, deep choices about the portrayals in his pieces – from African figures, to traditional symbols, and persisting spiritual themes. “If you look at most art, there are lots of embedded truths,” he says.

While working on his follicular iconoclasm, along the way Stanley mastered the art of brand storycraft while serving as a creative lead at three of the great brands of our time: Nike, Lego, and Starbucks. He is now the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Tether, a storytelling juggernaut creating branding, design and advertising for a diverse range of clients such as Tatcha, BMW Motorrad, Pepsi, Under Armour, Microsoft, Amazon, Gatorade and many others. And he fills up his spare time with writing books and posts, teaching classes, and speaking about wise branding things and stuff.

Susana Silva works in cut paper to produce decorative, complex elements that come together as both micro- and macro- landscapes. They mirror her affinity for stories found in nature, the scriptures, and the human experience.

Todd Robert Petersen lives in Cedar City, Utah, with his wife and three children. A graduate of the University of Oregon, Northern Arizona University, and Oklahoma State, Petersen is a professor of English at Southern Utah University, where he teaches creative writing and film studies courses.

Ty Turley is a multimedia artist, social designer, and storyteller with a strong background in social science, film production and comedy. Ty has a PhD in economics, and has worked as an assistant professor of economics and consultant to the World Bank and other aid organizations in international development globally. He is currently an MFA student in Integrated Media Arts and works on projects in mixed reality, new media, comedy, and dance. He has performed and produced comedy shows in New York for the last 8 years.

Walter was born and raised in southern California. He received his BFA from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and graduated with ""Great Distinction."" There he found the traditional approach to drawing and painting that he desired. That discipline, combined with an emphasis on the human figure remains central to his art today. Following graduation from Art Center, he worked as a free-lance book and magazine illustrator in the New York area for twenty-one years.

In the late 1990’s Walter was invited by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to paint scriptural themes. This opportunity sparked an interest that he had since childhood, of creating religious paintings in a classical fashion. These subjects continue to be an important part of his work, along with still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, and scenes of contemporary life. His work has been displayed in collections throughout the world. No matter what the subject, he approaches his work with passion and with gratitude for the ability to express himself through the visual arts.

Walter Rane and his wife currently live in New York City. They have four sons, two daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren.

Zoë Petersen is an illustrator from Southern Utah. She has worked as an in-house illustrator for Deseret News since 2021. Her work illustrates the delight to be found in the mundane through a conceptual perspective and textural mark-making.
Her work has been awarded by 3x3 Magazine, the Utah Society of Professional Journalists, and the Colorado Society of Professional Journalist. Her clients include Wayfare Magazine, Catapult Press, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University, The Johnson Center for Community Arts and Education, and Gumption Magazine.