Making music, honoring roots

When Anton Armstrong was a child attending Epiphany Lutheran Church, Hempstead, N.Y., he had no idea what he wanted to do when he grew up. He wasn’t even sure what he was good at doing. And then Carl and Carol Weber, young graduate students, came to Hempstead, and they helped develop an exciting music program.

St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minn.) alum Anton Armstrong directs the school choir, which is touring Norway this summer.

Armstrong went on to become a member of the American Boychoir. In 1978, he graduated from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn. And in 1990, he succeeded the esteemed Kenneth Jennings as the conductor of the world-famous St. Olaf Choir.

This summer, the St. Olaf Choir, St. Olaf Band and St. Olaf Orchestra will tour Norway as part of the country’s 100-year celebration of its separation from Sweden. “It’s a wonderful sense of affirmation and celebration of the forbearers of the people who founded this college,” Armstrong said. “I had an audience last summer with King Harald, and I was able to share the news that we were coming. He has been a longtime friend of St. Olaf’s, and he takes great pride that we would take our energies and our time to come back and celebrate with the Norwegian people.