M. Ryan Taylor
Director & Creator of Song Scouts™

Email: ryan@choirworks.com

M. Ryan Taylor is a lifelong singer, conductor, composer, and music educator whose career has been devoted to helping young musicians grow in both skill and courage. He earned a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and a Master of Music in Music Composition from Brigham Young University, where he also became Kodály-certified through the BYU InterMuse Academy under Dr. Jerry Jaquard. While at BYU, he soloed with the BYU Concert Choir on the album All Creatures of Our God and King under Mack Wilberg, with whom he also studied choral arranging. He studied choral conducting with Ronald Staheli, experiences that deeply shaped his musical standards and artistic vision.

As a performer, Ryan has sung leading operatic roles in Abinadi & The Other Wise Man (original operas), Così fan tutte, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Tartuffe, along with prominent musical theater roles including Mr. Bumble (Oliver!), The Manager (Damn Yankees), and Reverend Moore (Footloose). He has appeared widely as a concert soloist in California, and Utah. His choral experience spans decades and includes membership in ensembles such as the BYU Concert Choir, Chapman College Chamber Singers, Cantorum, Canticum Lucis, Our Lady Queen of Angels (section leader), St. James & St. John Episcopal (section leader), Hillcrest Stake Choir (director), directing various congregational choirs, and the FVHS Troubadours & Concert Choir (section leader and student director). He currently directs the Timpanogos Singers and the Timpanogos Youth Choirs and has led youth and children’s choirs in American Fork for over a decade.

Ryan is also an active composer and songwriter with an extensive catalog of original choral works and arrangements available at Choirworks.com. In addition to his choral work, he organized and directed the Utah Uke Fest for a decade and developed a “Power-Up” ukulele curriculum rooted in Kodály principles. After watching his ukulele students flourish through structured level sheets and earned patches, he began envisioning how that same sense of progression, motivation, and joyful achievement could be applied to singers.

The heart behind Song Scouts™ reaches even further back. As a Boy Scout, Ryan’s Eagle project involved organizing a Christmas performance tour for several senior care centers — a formative experience that taught him he did not have to wait for someone else to create meaningful service through music. He could simply begin. He also recognized how few structured musical skill-building opportunities existed within scouting beyond a single merit badge, and he began imagining a program that would combine artistic excellence, personal initiative, leadership, and service. Later, as a high school Troubadour under Ted Reid at Fountain Valley High School, he was entrusted as student director for both the chamber choir and concert choir, even overseeing paid Christmas performances when his teacher was unavailable. That trust and responsibility left a lasting impression about what young musicians are capable of when given structure, vision, and belief.

Song Scouts™ is the natural culmination of these experiences — rigorous musical training grounded in Kodály principles, professional-level performance standards, a love of patches and progression, and a conviction that music should move beyond rehearsal rooms into real communities. It exists to help singers develop skill, courage, leadership, and a lifelong habit of sharing their voice in service and joy.

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