St. Olaf Choir to Perform Severance Hall Concert as Part of Nationwide Winter Tour

St. Olaf Choir to Perform Severance Hall Concert as Part of Nationwide Winter Tour

St. Olaf Choir and Anton Armstrong present eclectic blend music of classical and world music, spirituals and new works during their stop here

CLEVELAND, Dec. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Tickets are now on sale for a Severance Hall concert by the world-renowned St. Olaf Choir, the pioneer a cappella choir in the United States. The 75-voice St. Olaf Choir will perform in Cleveland at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, January 31, as a part of their two-week Winter Tour 2005, which takes the choir from the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Tickets for the concert are available at the Severance Hall Box Office. Phone orders can be made at 216-231-1111 or 800-686-1141, or on-line at http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/. Concert proceeds will benefit Lutheran Agencies Organized in Service (LAOS), a federation of six social ministry organizations that minister to those struggling to live full and productive lives in Cuyahoga, Lorain, Lake, Geauga and Medina counties.

A national tour to a region of the United States is an annual tradition for the St. Olaf Choir and Conductor Anton Armstrong. However, the one-day, coast-to-coast travel from New York to Los Angeles was added to the itinerary when they were honored with a request to perform in the final concerts of the 2005 National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), including the final concert of the convention Saturday, Feb. 5, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The St. Olaf Choir opens and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir closes this extraordinary event, and then the young singers fly back to New York to resume their East Coast performances with a 3:00 p.m. concert the next day at Carnegie Hall.

Dr. Armstrong has constructed an eclectic program for this tour featuring a rich tapestry of classical and world music, spirituals and new works. The first half of the concert opens with choral masterworks including J.S. Bach's Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Agnus Dei from Franz Sussmayr's Ein Duetches Requiem, as well as the more contemporary Glories On Glories (The Celestial Country) by Charles Ives.

With an international tour to Norway set for June, the St. Olaf Choir will celebrate its Norwegian roots with Edvard Grieg's Pinsesalme (Peer Gynt, op. 23) and Knut Nystedt's Be Not Afraid. (In June the St. Olaf Choir will join the St. Olaf Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band in an unprecedented three-week tour in Norway, taking part in the country's celebration of 100 years since its separation from Sweden and to honor a century of friendship between Norway and St. Olaf College.) The first half of the 2005 national tour program closes with O Day Full of Grace, composed by the St. Olaf Choir's founder and first conductor (and a native of Norway), F. Melius Christiansen.

The second half features spirituals, world music and new works, including The Call (Spiritual Songs), a work composed by Kenneth Jennings (a former conductor of the St. Olaf Choir), Sing Your Praises, Alleluia by Charles Forsberg (professor of music at St. Olaf College), and Frank Martin's Sanctus (Mass for Double Choir). The program concludes with Eric Whitacre's A Boy and A Girl, Willim Henry Monk's Abide with Me and Keith Hampton's True Light.

"In programming this 2005 tour, I wanted us to celebrate the traditions and legacies that have made the St. Olaf Choir the great ensemble that it is today," Armstrong said. "This includes the masterpieces in the choral repertory, as well as the music that is part of the Lutheran and Norwegian roots of St. Olaf College. It is also part of our tradition to present a world view, and we are always building our repertory to bring the sounds of many cultures to the stage, such as the Venezuelan lullaby Duerme Negrito."

Armstrong has led the St. Olaf Choir since 1990, and every year he leads the ensemble through new adventures in performance. "We are thrilled to perform in such wonderful settings, including concert halls like Carnegie, Severance and Heinz, and to visit great universities," he said. "When the invitation came to perform in the closing concert of the ACDA National Convention, we thought long and hard before making the decision to make the rigorous trip from New York to L.A. and back again in a day-and-a-half. However, it is a great honor for us to be part of this concert, an experience that will challenge these young singers, and it will be a musical journey they will always treasure."

Founded in 1912 and a creative force behind the a cappella tradition, the St. Olaf Choir is the premier choral ensemble of Minnesota's St. Olaf College, and is best known today for its performances in the annual internationally broadcast "St. Olaf Christmas Festival" on PBS.

The St. Olaf Choir is comprised of full-time undergraduate students at St. Olaf College, a liberal arts institution in Northfield, Minnesota, which currently enrolls about 3,000 students. The singers commit to balancing full course loads with rehearsals five days a week, and further demonstrating their unique commitment, choir members perform concerts entirely from memory.

Under the direction of St. Olaf alumnus Dr. Anton Armstrong, who has conducted the St. Olaf Choir since 1990, the 75-member choir has developed a powerful presence of global diversity in its repertoire. There have been only three other conductors of the St. Olaf Choir since its inception more than 90 years ago: Kenneth Jennings, Olaf Christiansen and the founder and first conductor F. Melius Christiansen.

The St. Olaf Choir has also been featured in a number of symphonic collaborations, including the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, under the batons of Sir Neville Marriner, Neemi Jarvi, Sir David Willcocks, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Andreas Delfs, Helmuth Rilling and the late Robert Shaw.

Touring, recording and broadcasts are all major components in the artistic life of the St. Olaf Choir. Best known for its annual performances on the international television and radio broadcasts of the "St. Olaf Christmas Festival," the St. Olaf Choir has performed for capacity audiences in major concert halls across the nation and overseas since 1920. Annual tours attract audiences totaling 25,000, and recent tours have included a summer 2001 European tour including Paris, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, as well as a 1997 "down under" tour to Australia and New Zealand. The St. Olaf Choir has also performed for numerous presidents and foreign heads of state, and in 1988, it was the only collegiate choir to be invited to perform at the Seoul Olympic Arts Festival in South Korea.

The St. Olaf Choir's ever-expanding discography now features 19 discs following the May release of Great Hymns of Faith, Vol. 2, including its first international release, Charles Ives: The Celestial Country, as well as St. Olaf Records' My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord, The Spirituals of William L. Dawson, Advance Australia Fair and Great Hymns of Faith. All recording are available through St. Olaf Records at http://www.stolafrecords.com/ or (507) 646-3048. To learn more about the St. Olaf Choir, log on to http://www.stolafchoir.com/. Photos available upon request.


Source: St. Olaf Choir

CONTACT: Karl Reichert, Aveus for the St. Olaf Choir, +1-612-215-3840,
+1-612-708-5275 (cell), kreichert@aveus.com.

Web site: http://www.stolafchoir.com/
http://www.stolafrecords.com/
http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/

NOTE TO EDITORS: Press Materials/Photos available online at: http://stolafchoir.com.

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