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St. Olaf Choir to perform Sunday

By Karl Reichert
February 14, 2008

Founded in 1912 and internationally recognized as a creative force behind the a cappella choral tradition, the St. Olaf Choir and conductor Anton Armstrong '78 celebrated the ensemble's heritage during their recent 11-city West Coast Tour. The ensemble will end this year's tour with a concert in Boe Memorial at St. Olaf College Sunday, Feb. 17, at 3:30 p.m.

Note that seating for the event will be limited, but the concert can be viewed and heard live at stolaf.edu.

StOlafChoir07Fest
The St. Olaf Choir performs during the 2007 St. Olaf Christmas Festival.
Armstrong looked to the past to create a program that explores the legacies of the historic St. Olaf Choir and presents a rich and diverse array of works that will delight fans of great choral music.

A mid-winter national tour to a region of the United States is an annual tradition for the St. Olaf Choir, and each year Armstrong selects a program that features a rich tapestry of classical, sacred and world music, giving the ensemble new adventures in performance. "This year we are touring with a program that is primarily a cappella," Armstrong says. "A full choral concert presented unaccompanied by instruments is demanding for the singers, and it's a style of performance that gave the St. Olaf Choir national prominence during its earliest years."

The program
Music from the Renaissance has always had a significant place in the St. Olaf Choir's programs, and this tour program opens with Peter Philips' Ascendit Deus, Palestrina's Sicut Cervus and the first movement of Bach's Jauchzet dem Herrn for double chorus.

"Choral works based on great Protestant hymns literally helped give birth to the St. Olaf Choir," Armstrong says, and its founder F. Melius Christiansen's arrangement of Lindeman's Built on the Rock was performed regularly during those early years. It opens Part II of the program, followed by Mendelssohn's For God Commanded Angels, Gustav Schreck's Lord Hosanna (Advent Motet) arranged by Olaf C. Christiansen (the second conductor of the St. Olaf Choir and F. Melius' son), Kirke Mechem's By the Rivers of Babylon (Peace Motets) and Charles Forsberg's The Exaltation of Christ.

Other elements of the program include Olaf C. Christiansen's The Song of Peace and Arvo Part's ... which was the son of ..... "Given the issues of the day, we want to present works that offer hope and comfort," Armstrong says. "The Ocean of Peace is a sophisticated work by St. Olaf alumnus Ralph Johnson. It has a very powerful text. Arvo Part is one of the preeminent choral composers of our time, and this work is more atypical compared to his other works. While it is minimalistic harmonically, it's not minimalistic rhythmically."

Armstrong has also included three works of Scandinavian heritage in a section he has titled "From the Land of the Midnight Sun." The concert will conclude with What a Wonderful World arranged by Rene Clausen and F. Melius Christiansen's Beautiful Savior.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.