GAYLORD, MN, JULY 9, 2026 – Gaylord, Minesota based musical ensemble La Grande Bande is pleased to announce it is the recipient of an FY 2026 grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts. This funding will provide partial financial support the November 2026 musical program entitled Music from New France.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support opportunities across the country for Americans to experience and participate in the arts,” said Mary Anne Carter, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “As we celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary this year, it is a moment to recognize the important role the arts continue to play in our lives, communities, and heritage.”
La Grande Bande’s concert program, Music from New France, subtitled “From Battlefields to Bourbon Street: Music of the French Alliance during the American Revolution,” centers on a rare 1754 manuscript of French Baroque music that was sent to nuns in New Orleans—at that time in French Louisiana—a district of New France. The district would eventually be sold to the United States in 1803 by Napoleon during the Louisiana Purchase, from which the State of Minnesota would eventually emerge.
“We are thrilled to have been awarded this grant from the NEA,” La Grande Bande’s music & artistic director, Dr. Michael Thomas Asmus said. “The Music from New France project will explore music that was written by famous French composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully and André Campra. This program is not just a sampling of music by these famous composers. What makes this project unique is the manuscript source for many of the songs included on the program. The compilers of the manuscript used newly written sacred texts and set those texts to secular tunes by Lully, Campra, and others from their secular operas and cantatas. The resulting newly created sacred songs would have been used in religious services or as entertainments for the Sisters and their guests in New Orleans. This music, which is so quintessential to the French culture in the 18th century, would have offered the Sisters a taste of their French homeland.”
Activities for the Music from New France project will take place at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord, MN with an open rehearsal on November 11 at 4pm. A pre-concert talk will be offered on November 12 at 6:45pm with the concert performance following at 7:30pm. A pre-concert talk and concert performance will take place at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Minneapolis on November 14 at 6:45pm and 7:30pm.
La Grande Bande’s 26/27 includes five additional concert programs, as well as additional offerings for educational programming. For more detailed information about Music from New France project, its associated events, ticketing information, or the other offerings for La Grande Bande’s 26/27 Season, please visit www.lagrandebande.org/season2627.
About La Grande Bande
La Grande Bande strives to present innovative, unique, and inspiring musical programs right in the heart of southern-Minnesota farm country. With performances called “warm and sensitive” by the Star Tribune, we seek to reintroduce classical music to our communities using the instruments and techniques that the first audiences might have heard. LGB is composed of musicians from across the United States and from around the world who are specialists in the field of Early Music—music written between c. 1600-1800—and who play on historical instruments and sing in an historical manner.
Our goals are to present “masterworks” alongside lesser-known compositions, illustrating the extensive musical production during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries; to foster musical growth in the younger generations through directed-educational events, open rehearsal sessions, or masterclasses; to reinvigorate the older generations with outreach concerts, pre-concert talks, open rehearsals, and beyond. We see incredible value in resurrecting the music written by the great masters of our past; it’s a historical, cultural, and musical lesson rolled into one.
About the National Endowment for the Arts
Established by Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. By advancing opportunities for arts participation and practice, the NEA fosters and sustains an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States. To learn more, visit arts.gov.