GAYLORD, MN, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024 — La Grande Bande, a local classical music ensemble, is gearing up for it’s 2024/25 Season opening concert “Italian Fire” at 7:30pm on Friday, September 27 at First Lutheran Church, Saint Peter. The concert Friday night will feature several works for violins, cello, and harpsichord. “This concert is one of four for our upcoming season that features music written by George Frideric Handel,” noted Music & Artistic Director Dr. Michael Thomas Asmus. “2025 will be the 340th anniversary of Handel’s birthday, so we wanted to commemorate him and some of the great music he has written.”
According to Dr. Asmus, Handel was greatly influenced by the music and people in Italy. “Handel spent several years studying and working in Italy, from around 1706 through 1710. Those years were incredibly fruitful for him. Not only because of the people he met but because of the wealth of knowledge he gained about Italian music while there.” Handel eventually went on to establish an Italian opera house in England where he eventually wrote some of his most famous works, including “Messiah.” Other composers on the concert include Dario Castello, Andrea Falconieri, and Isabella Leonarda, a musically gifted nun who was one of the most prolific composers in her time.
Most of the music La Grande Bande performs was written hundreds of years ago. Some of the music on their “Italian Fire” program is over 420 years old. “We perform using instruments and techniques that people in the Seventeenth Century, like Handel or Leonarda, would have been familiar with,” Asmus explains. “The instruments and playing techniques make a much different tone and atmosphere than what you might hear at a symphony or on a movie soundtrack. Most of the instruments we use are copies of instruments that are hundreds of years old and still in playing condition.”
“There were a lot of changes happening in music around the 1590s through 1730s,” Asmus continued. “Nothing was really standardized and musical tastes were changing at a rapid pace. This was the era when opera was born and also where the skeleton for the symphony began, too. On this concert, what we’re aiming to do with this is to demonstrate just how drastic some of these changes were for violin players and yet how similar things could be, too.”
For the performance, Asmus (harpsichordist) will be joined by the Holland-based baroque violinist Chloe Prendergast, her baroque violinist sibling Rafa Prendergast, and Saint Paul-based baroque cellist Maryne Mossey.
La Grande Bande has several events planned for the week. They will host a free open rehearsal session on Wednesday, September 25 starting at 4:00pm at First Lutheran Church, Saint Peter. At 6:00pm on Thursday, September 26 at the Saint Peter Public Library, they will hold a free preview performance/lecture with selections from the concert. On Friday, September 27 at First Lutheran Church, Saint Peter they will host a pre-concert talk starting at 6:45pm with the concert performance to follow at 7:30pm. A reception with light refreshments will be held after the concert. Tickets are $5-15 and can be purchased on their website www.lagrandebande.org/tickets or by phone at 507-237-6539.