Anton Armstrong, Conductor
 

Anton Armstrong is the Harry R. and Thora H. Tosdal Professor of Music at St. Olaf College and Conductor of the St. Olaf Choir, a position he assumed in 1990. He came to this position following ten years in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he served on the faculty of Calvin College and conducted the Campus Choir, the Calvin College Alumni Choir and the Grand Rapids Symphony Chorus.
 
A graduate of St. Olaf College, Anton Armstrong earned a Master of Music degree at the University of Illinois and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Michigan State University. He holds membership in several professional societies including the American Choral Directors Association, Choristers Guild, Chorus America, and the International Federation for Choral Music. He also serves as editor of a multicultural choral series for Earthsongs Publications and co-editor of the revised St. Olaf Choral Series for Augsburg Fortress Publishers. He is featured with André Thomas on the instructional video dealing with adolescent singers entitled Body, Mind, Spirit, Voice. He is a contributing writer to Volume I of Teaching Music through Performance in Choir and a contributor to Way Over in Beulah Lan’ by André Thomas.
 
Dr. Armstrong is widely recognized for his work in the area of youth and children’s choral music. He served for over twenty years on the summer faculty of the American Boychoir School, Princeton, New Jersey and held the position of Conductor of the St. Cecilia Youth Chorale, a 75 voice treble chorus based in Grand Rapids, from 1981-1990. He has conducted the Troubadours, 30-voice boys’ ensemble of the Northfield Youth Choirs since 1991. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Boychoir School. In June 1998, he began his tenure as founding conductor of the Oregon Bach Festival Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy.
 
Anton Armstrong has conducted the St. Olaf Choir in critically acclaimed solo concert performances at the 59th National Conference of the Music Educators National Conference in April 2004, the Sixth World Symposium on Choral Music in August 2002, and at the 1999 National Convention of the American Choral Directors Association in Chicago, Illinois. In February 2005, The St. Olaf Choir shared the stage with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in presenting the finale concert for the national conference of the American Choral Directors Association at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, California.
 
He has frequently conducted ensembles and appeared before regional and national gatherings of the American Choral Directors Association, Music Educators National Conference, Choristers Guild, American Guild of Organists, Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, Organization of American Kodaly Educators and the Orff-Schulwerk Association. In August 1996 he was featured as a clinician at the Fourth World Symposium on Choral Music in Sydney, Australia. In July 2008 he was a featured clinician at the Eighth World Symposium in Copenhagen, Denmark.
 
Dr. Armstrong is active as a guest conductor and lecturer throughout North America, Europe, Scandinavia, Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and the Caribbean. In June 2003, he was honored to serve as the first Peter Godfrey Visiting Professor of Choral Music at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and in Spring 2005, he served as the Visiting Housewright Scholar in the School of Music at Florida State University. In recent years he has guest conducted such noted ensembles as the Utah Symphony and Symphony Chorus, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Westminster Choir, the American Boychoir and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He has also collaborated in concert with Bobby McFerrin and Garrison Keillor.
 
In 1992 Anton Armstrong made his European conducting debut at the International Band and Choir Festival in Brussels, Belgium and returned to Vienna, Austria in March 2000 to conduct the 25th anniversary concerts of this festival. He led the St. Olaf Choir on a concert tour of Denmark and Norway in 1993, which included a performance at the Bergen International Festival, Norway and in January 1997, he conducted the ensemble in a four-week concert tour to New Zealand and Australia. In June 2001 he guided the St. Olaf Choir on a three-week concert tour of Central Europe and returned to Norway with the St. Olaf Choir for a three-week performance tour in June 2005, which included a performance for Queen Sonja of Norway.
 
In the summer of 2001, Dr. Armstrong conducted the World Youth Choir sponsored by the International Federation of Choral Music with concerts in Venezuela and the United States. In May 2005, the St. Olaf Choir and Anton Armstrong received a special invitation to perform for President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush and their guests for the National Day of prayer held in the East Room of the White House.
 
In January 2006, Baylor University announced that Anton Armstrong was selected from a field of 118 distinguished nominees to receive the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching. The award is designed to honor great teachers, to stimulate discussion in the academy about the value of teaching and to encourage departments and institutions to value their own great teachers. He spent February-June 2007 in residency at Baylor University as a visiting professor.
  
For more information about Dr. Anton Armstrong and the St. Olaf Choir, log on to www.stolafchoir.com.

Ann Usher is an Associate Professor of Music at The University of Akron, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate choral music education classes, supervises student teachers, and directs the University Singers. Previously, she taught choral music at Solon Middle School, in Solon, OH, a southeast suburb of Cleveland. Her large choral program was recognized for excellence at the junior high/middle school level. Her groups consistently received superior ratings at OMEA (Ohio Music Education Association) adjudicated events and performed for the OMEA Professional Conference in 1995, the ACDA Central Division Conference in 1996, and the OCDA Summer Conference in 1997.
In addition to her university duties, Dr. Usher also directs the Cleveland Orchestra Children's Chorus. This select treble choir of 5th - 9th graders performs throughout the year with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus at Severance Hall. During the summer, the chorus performs at the Blossom Music Festival. The Cleveland Orchestra Children's Chorus also performed for the OMEA Professional Conference in 2003 and the OCDA Summer Conference in 2009. Recent performances include Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Schumann’s Scenes from Faust, Shore’s Lord of the Rings Symphony, Humperdink’s Hansel and Gretel, Britten’s War Requiem, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Berlioz’s Te Deum, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, Shore’s Lord of the Rings Symphony and the annual Christmas Concerts.
Dr. Usher is the Immediate Past Chair, past Vocal Advisor and Vocal Affairs Chair for the Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) Adjudicated Events Committee, a past president for OMEA District VII, and an adjudicator for OMEA in voice and piano. She was the co-chair for the 2006 OMEA North Coast Professional Conference which involved over ten thousand teachers, students, clinicians, and exhibitors. She served for six years as the Junior High Repertoire and Standards Chair for Ohio Choral Directors Association and four years as the Youth/Student Activities chair for OCDA. Dr. Usher has served as a guest clinician/conductor/adjudicator for many Ohio organizations, for VanderCook College in Chicago, and for the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Dr. Usher received her Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Northern Iowa, a Master of Music degree in choral conducting from Kent State University, and a Ph.D. in music education also at Kent State University. Ann lives in Medina, OH, with her husband, Tom, daughter Kelsey, and twin boys Adam and Logan.