Stephen Armstrong is a pianist, organist, choir director, and music historian from Grand Rapids, MI. He serves as the primary keyboardist at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, where he teaches piano and music appreciation in addition to accompanying recitals, juries, and other university events. He is also the Minister of Music at Trinity United Methodist Church in Durham, NC, where he works as a service musician, choral conductor, and handbell director.

Stephen began performing and teaching professionally at the age of eighteen. His students have gone on to win competitions in piano and composition, including the St. Cecilia Concerto Competition in his native Grand Rapids. He teaches at his piano studio in South Raleigh/Garner as well as at Trinity United Methodist Church in Durham.

An active recitalist and collaborative pianist, Stephen has played in concerts across the United States and in Italy. He performs regularly throughout the Research Triangle region, including collaborations with Kent Foss (formerly Duke University), LaSaundra Booth (UNC-Chapel Hill), Elliott Brown (North Carolina Opera), and Kathleen Jasinskas. He accompanied operatic mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford at the African-American Theater Preview hosted by the Triangle Friends of African-American Arts in 2023. He has also acted as concert host and/or pre-concert lecturer for the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY) and the North Carolina Opera.

Stephen holds a PhD in historical musicology from the Eastman School of Music, where he taught courses ranging from pre-college classes in music analysis to doctoral seminars on 19th-century music and travel. His dissertation on musical tourism in Italy won several awards and fellowships, including the American Musicological Society’s Holmes / D’Accone Dissertation Fellowship in Opera Studies. He also holds a master’s degree in piano performance from Michigan State University, where he studied with Deborah Moriarty. He has taken additional lessons or masterclasses with Aviram Reichert, Minsoo Sohn, Stephen Prutsman, Angela Hewitt, George Vatchnadze, Derek Polischuk, Jim Crew, and Peter Van Dessel. While at Eastman, Stephen also studied choral conducting with William Weinert and voice with Chad Somers.

Stephen’s research has been published in the Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music, the Journal of the American Liszt Society, Women & Music, and the Journal of Sound and Music in Games, among other venues.