Armstrong to deliver seminar in Israel

By Kari VanDerVeen
December 12, 2008

Anton Armstrong '78, Tosdal Professor of Music at St. Olaf College and conductor of the St. Olaf Choir, will travel to Israel Dec. 15-22 to deliver a seminar to Hallel, the Israel Choral Organization. His lecture will focus on the Hebrew characters in African-American spirituals and the performance practices of this music.

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Armstrong
The engagement, which is being funded in part by the United States Embassy in Israel, will take Armstrong to both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, allowing him to spend time in the Holy Land just days before the world celebrates the birth of Christ. Armstrong says speaking at this seminar continues his lifelong work of sharing and spreading the legacy of choral music in the United States. While the African-American spiritual is influenced by African song, Armstrong points out that it is distinctively American. He's worked to bring more of this music into the repertoire of the St. Olaf Choir and also delivered a lecture about it this July at the eighth annual World Symposium of Choral Music in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"To bring the African-American spiritual to a wider world audience is very exciting. This music shares in so many of the common struggles of the human existence and to the profundity and incredible inspiration of God's grace, God's mercy, and God's steadfastness through time," Armstrong says. "We see it in these characters of the Old Testament, we see it through the times of slavery, and we saw this emerge with the election of President-Elect Barack Obama. We see this sort of dream of perseverance coming through. Music is so often prophetic, and these songs have been a source of inspiration and a source of vision."

Armstrong was asked to speak in Israel after the highly lauded speech he delivered at the World Symposium of Choral Music this summer that focused on the performance of the African-American spiritual. At that conference, he was one of just three Americans -- along with St. Olaf Artist-in-Residence for Voice Sigrid Johnson -- to serve as a guest lecturer.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.