Jay E. Welch

Who was Jay E. Welch?

Jay Evard Welch was an American musician who was a music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a longtime University of Utah professor, and founder of the Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus, Jay Welch Chorale and the Salt Lake Repertory Orchestra.

Welch was born in Salt Lake City on November 6, 1925, to Jesse Evard and Pearl Snow Welch. He served in the Navy during World War II and the Korean War. He married Marcelle Beecher in Salt Lake City on March 21, 1951.

Welch graduated from UCLA with a major in mathematics and minor in music. He continued his music studies at the Paris Conservatory of Music, graduated with a master's degree in composition from Mills College in Oakland, California, and earned a Ph.D. in 1959 from the University of Utah, where he taught for 39 years before retiring in 1993. Besides teaching music theory and other classes to music majors, Welch taught music appreciation to thousands of non-majors. In 2004, the University of Utah’s Emeritus Alumni Association awarded him the prestigious Merit of Honor Award.

In 1957, Welch was named assistant conductor to Richard Condie, the music director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Welch was appointed to be the first music director of the Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus in 1969. In 1974, succeeding Condie, Welch became the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s music director, a position he held for only six months, due to an unexplained illness.