St. Olaf Choir to bring songs of joy and love to Bethesda-by-the-Sea church Tuesday

The internationally renowned St. Olaf Choir is coming to Palm Beach's Episcopalian Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea Tuesday as part of the group's 2024 Winter Tour.

Set for 7 p.m. at the historic church at South County Road and Barton Avenue, the 75-member choir from Minnesota's St. Olaf College will perform a four-part concert encompassing themes of joy, compassion and love. Organist Catherine Rodland, St. Olaf's artist-in-residence, will accompany the choir.

Founded in 1912 by Norwegian-born conductor Fredrik Melius Christiansen, the choir from the Northfield, Minn., private college has placed itself in the forefront of choral music throughout its history.

It was, for example, the only nonprofessional choir to perform at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics Festival. More recently, the choir was the sole American representative for the 2013 European Broadcasting Union's "Let the People Sing" Choral Competition, where it was one of four finalists.

Key to this success, conductor Anton Armstrong said in an interview with the Daily News, is the signature approach to the choir’s tone, first instilled by Christiansen. “Nearly 70 singers sound like four voices,” said Armstrong, who has led the St. Olaf Choir since 1990. “We’ve worked very hard to have a warm quality of sound that will allow the text to be portrayed most vividly.”

Unlike instrumentalists, Armstrong said, choir members not only have to match tone but also diction, because it's critical to the audience's experience that they understand the text in relation to the emotions the choir conveys.

The choir’s sound, he said, is a community effort.

“It’s (about) how can you serve the music, and that’s a different attitude,” said Armstrong, who is an alumnus of the choir. “The music becomes a metaphor for life in so many ways: How can we serve others rather than being selfish?”

While the tone has remained constant, the choir's musical repertoire has gone through marked changes in its 112-year span. According to Armstrong, under Christiansen, the choir’s focus was geared toward choir music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It retained its a cappella focus while expanding to Renaissance and folk music while under its second conductor, Olaf Christiansen, Fredrik Melius Christiansen's son.

However, significant change came with St. Olaf Choir’s third conductor, Kenneth Jennings, like Armstrong an alumnus of the choir. Armstrong said Jennings also began introducing instrumental accompaniments.

He first used an accompanying guitar or piano until “by the time I was in the choir in the late 1970s, he was actually taking a small chamber ensemble out,” said Armstrong, who has expanded the group's instrumental collaborations to include performances with the St. Olaf Orchestra.

Jennings also began broadened the musical repertoire beyond the traditional Western European canon, slowly introducing modern composers as well as music composed by African-Americans. “Under Olaf, who led the choir for 27 years, (the choir) performed one Negro spiritual back in 1955 when they toured Scandinavia and Europe,” Armstrong said. “Jennings was much better about that and did several more pieces.”

But when Armstrong took the reins in 1990, he "kicked the door wide open," expanding the choir’s repertoire not only with music composed by African-Americans, but also from regions including Latin America, the Pacific Rim, Africa and Asia, while still performing a host of choir music from the Western canon.

As an example, Armstrong pointed to the first part of this tour's program, which features a set list of compositions primarily written by people of African descent, including Armstrong's longtime friend, the late celebrated choral composer Alice Parker, who died on Christmas Eve last year.

"She was a friend for 40 years, so I wanted to honor her," he said. "We had already sent the program to print, but I was able to squeeze that in."

However, guests can still expect to hear the choir's signature tunes, including Fredrik Melius Christiansen's arrangement of "Beautiful Savior," which will close the performance.

"I'd get fired if I didn't do that," Armstrong said chuckling.

Tickets for the concert are $45 for adults and $10 for students of all ages and are available at https://wp.stolaf.edu/tickets/choir or call 800-363-5487. A 10% group discount is also available via phone call for parties of 10 or more.

Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: St. Olaf Choir to bring songs of joy, love to Bethesda-by-the-Sea