Young tenor comes home - but now he's on tour

Cole Blume

By Fred Crafts, The (Eugene) Register-Guard

COLE BLUME is coming home, and he is bringing Anton Armstrong and some 70 friends from Minnesota with him.

"It's come full circle," says Blume, a former South Eugene High School student who is now a sophomore at St. Olaf College, a 3,000-student, Lutheran-funded, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minn.

Blume sings in the school's choir, which will perform here on Wednesday.

"Hult Center is where the St. Olaf seed was planted in me six years ago," Blume says. "Now, I'm coming back, doing what I had hoped to do."

An outstanding young tenor, Blume was just beginning high school when he first encountered Anton Armstrong, the St. Olaf College choral conductor. Armstrong also runs the Oregon Bach Festival's Youth Choral Academy for teen-age singers.

Blume recalls the time he spent under Armstrong's guidance that summer as "magical."

"He just seemed to work so effortlessly with his singers to create this unbelievable product of beautiful and emotional music," Blume recalled by phone from the Minnesota campus. Blume, who has his eye on becoming a high school choral conductor, knew right away that Armstrong was the man he wanted to study with - to learn how he did it. Now, he takes private voice lessons from Armstrong and sings in his choir.

Blume's parents, Dan and Gail Blume, live in Eugene. During his summer vacation last year, Blume starred in "West Side Story" at Lane Community College.

What is there about Armstrong as conductor and teacher that would make a young man from the verdant Willamette Valley travel to the snowy Minnesota, where the winter temperatures often dip below zero? Blume has an instant answer: "His music-making and his humanity. It can serve as a model for lots of people."

"He has a genuine care for not only the music but for the people who are making it. In this relationship, we just both thrive," he says. Although Armstrong can be exacting, Blume says, "With him it doesn't seem like it is work. He makes it feel like we have this inherent ability to make music, and we just do it. This feeling that making music is totally effortless for sure doesn't come without hard work."