Barbara Sloan Allen

1937 - 2025

Barbara Sloan Allen

January 21, 1937 ~ February 7, 2025

Barbara first played the piano when she was four. She brought music to the world for the next eighty plus years, along the way offering a stunning singing voice, to the surprise of many in the audience at a piano recital one evening, where she began to sing in an operatic voice as she played along. While she excelled as a pianist-first performing with the Brigham Young University symphony orchestra at the age of ten-she will also be remembered as an extraordinary teacher, and the esteemed Vocal Coach of the BYU Opera.

Born in Provo, Utah, to Mark Knight Allen and Phyllis Sloan Allen, Barbara received a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in music from BYU, going on to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Illinois. As a solo pianist she performed with orchestras and in chamber music concerts not only in the United States but in Germany and the USSR. She then took a teaching position at the University of California at Long Beach, where she became a tenured Professor. After retirement, she returned to Provo and BYU's music department for the rest of her life.

Barbara is survived by her sons, Mark Allen Crockett and John Knight Allen, daughter-in-law Judy Davis Crockett, two granddaughters, two sisters, and a brother.

As a mother and grandmother Barbara was an inspiring mentor and helpmate, coaching and attending countless performances. Which brings us to Barbara, the accompanist, or rather, collaborator. The piano part may be as difficult as the solo, but given much less credit. She performed with family members and others, who could rely on her to automatically appear, often driving distances to rehearsals galore. And capable of playing almost any piece of music. At the family Christmas party Barbara led the singing as she played the piano, adjusting the key if necessary to make it easier for folks to sing along. She sang everything from "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" to Handel's Messiah, encouraging even the youngest children to join in with this seemingly impossible music, turning her living room into a concert hall. Barbara served as the Choir Director of the Riverwood Ward for over twenty years. She appreciated everyone in the choir, although she did speak with a certain tenderness about "my tenors," which were hard to find.

As a long-time member of her book group, Literary League, she was expected to provide musical programs as well as book presentations. Barbara was a great reader, with particular fondness for British literature and WWII stories. With a taste that ranged from the grandeur of Winston Churchill and Shakespeare to her favorite, Trollope, then Agatha Christie. She liked a big book, paper version. Ask her to define the most incomprehensible word, and she could.

Perhaps an even rarer skill, she was a good listener. No surprise that Barbara was a wonderful hostess. She entertained family, students, and colleagues. In the summer she hosted a gathering of high school classmates in her cabin at Brickerhaven in Provo Canyon, where everyone would share a favorite book they'd read that year. She cooked up delicacies from luscious lasagna to her lemon sponge cake. As if that weren't enough of a treat, when the eating and talking were done, somebody would ask, "Now can you play the piano for us?" Which of course she did, thrilling her guests with Chopin and other favorites, on a grand piano that had somehow intrepidly made its way up the curving canyon road to her cabin, there to resound among the trees.

May the heavens now be blessed with Barbara's talent and generosity. We may not know the professions that will be needed in another, improved existence. But surely there will be music. And Barbara will be there.

Her funeral will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 15, at the Riverwood Ward, 303 W 3700 N, Provo, preceded by visitations from 9:30-10:45 a.m. Condolences may be extended at www.bergmortuary.com.