News Blog
La Grande Bande Receives National Endowment for the Arts Grant to Support “Music from New France”
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.
La Grande Bande Presents Concerts of Baroque Masterpieces November 14, 15
GAYLORD, MN, OCTOBER 30, 2024 — La Grande Bande, a local classical music ensemble, will continue it’s 2024/25 Concert Season with a concert entitled “Handel’s Water Musicks” at 7:30pm on Thursday, November 14 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Gaylord and Friday, November 15 at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis.
The concert will feature two works written by George Frideric Handel in 1708 and 1717. “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.”
The first half of the concert will feature a cantata by Handel, Oh come chiare e belle, which La Grande Bande will be presenting as a staged production. “We decided to stage the cantata to help illustrate the underlying plot of the cantata,” Asmus noted. “There’s going to be a really beautiful backdrop we created using a beautiful painting of Castel Sant’Angelo made by Caspar van Wittel in the late seventeenth-century. There will be costumes, props, and a few other really neat things, too.”
On the surface, the cantata’s plot centers largely around the Tiber River, which is depicted as less glorious than in its past. Thanks to the help of the shepherd Olinto and the goddess Gloria, the Tiber is restored to its former greatness by the cantata’s conclusion. In between the lines, however, the cantata is a homage to Pope Clement XI with poetry likely written by Cardinal Ruspoli, a patron of Handel while he was in Rome.
The other piece on the concert program is Handel’s famous Water Music Suites, selections from which you’ve no doubt heard used at weddings, in TV commercials, or practically anywhere else. “This piece is probably one of the best known by Handel, especially the hornpipe which I’m sure many people have heard played at weddings,” Asmus said. The Water Music Suites are filled with baroque-era dance music that accompanied king George I down the Thames on July 7, 1717. “The really remarkable thing about Water Music is that they had a barge filled with musicians, somewhere around 50 players, which is quite remarkable,” Asmus noted. “We’ll have about half that number for our performances. It’ll be a real treat for everyone to hear this incredible music played on instruments that king George I would have heard back then.”
For the performances, Asmus (harpsichordist) will be joined by the three vocalists, Dr. Catherine Sandstedt, Alina Tamborini, and Dr. Alyssa Anderson, along with an orchestra of 22 players. The instruments in the orchestra includes the recorder, baroque oboes and bassoon, baroque trumpets and horns, baroque violins and violas, baroque cellos and baroque bass, and two harpsichords.
La Grande Bande has several events planned for the week. They will host two free open rehearsal sessions on Tuesday, November 12 and Wednesday, November 13 starting at 4:30pm at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord. On Thursday, November 14 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord they will host a pre-concert talk starting at 6:45pm with the concert performance to follow at 7:30pm. There will be a second performance on Friday, November 15 at Annunciation Catholic Church, Gaylord. A reception with light refreshments will be held after the Gaylord performance. Tickets can be purchased on the website www.lagrandebande.org/tickets or by phone at 507-237-6539.