With an ‘Entertaining, warm, sensitive’ debut, La Grande Bande Continues its groundbreaking 2019 – 2020 Season Nov 1

Their ‘Casual Concert’ offers music, food, freedom

GAYLORD, MN, Oct 3, 2019 – After opening their season with a debut called “entertaining, warm, and sensitive” by the Star Tribune, La Grande Bande (LGB) will continue its 2019–2020 Season on Friday, November 1 in Arlington, MN.

The second concert of the season will present music in a relaxed setting. “We’re really trying to create an environment which welcomes everyone,” noted Music & Artistic Director Michael Thomas Asmus. “We want to allow people to do some very sacrilegious things—talk, wear casual clothes, eat, move during the performances. It’s really just a huge experiment, but we think it will work well.”

Even members of the ensemble will be casually dressed. “The whole point of the evening is to relax everything about a typical concert,” Asmus noted. After all, that fancy dress which is often found in paintings was frequently normal dress for people of the day.

In an homage to the Collegium Musicum which Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann ran in Leipzig, La Grande Bande hopes to make this format of concert a feature of its seasons in the coming years. “Concerts were much more relaxed in the Baroque period. The concerts that Bach and Telemann performed were almost certainly accompanied by chatting, dining, and moving audience members.”

La Grande Bande will perform two pieces which were actually performed at one of Bach’s Collegium Musicum performances: his Coffee Cantata and his Harpsichord Concerto in A. The program will be rounded out with a love cantata by Giovanni Bononcini and a flute sonata by Telemann. English translations for the cantatas will be projected for the performance. The concert will feature Immanuel Davis (baroque flute), Catherine Sandstedt (soprano), Garrett Eucker (tenor), and Justin Spenner (baritone).

La Grande Bande’s concert day will begin with the group’s second outreach concert at The Good Samaritan Society’s Arlington facility. They will perform selections from the evening’s concert, talk about Baroque music, about the music on the program, and more! The public is invited to attend a free open rehearsal at the Arlington Haus Too from 3:00–5:00 pm on November 1. No reservations or tickets are required.

The “Casual Concert” will begin at 7:00 pm at the Arlington Haus too. Audience members are encouraged to come hungry. Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the venue beginning at 6:30 pm and during the performance.

A Casual Concert
Friday, November 1 at 7:00 pm
Arlington Haus Too
147 W Main Street
Arlington, MN 55307

Tickets: $5 (advance), $7 (at the door)

**This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund**

Educational Programming Announcement

Gaylord, MN, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 – La Grande Bande announces a slight change in its educational programming, as proposed earlier last month. GFW Schools informed us a few weeks ago that our schedule and theirs would not be compatible for this season. We’re sorry that we are unable to partner with them this season, and hope to do so in a future season!

Thankfully, we’ve been able to find a solution which will allow us to offer four educational Programs, as we initially planned:

We have added an Outreach Concert which will replace the third masterclass session. The event will take place at the Good Samaritan Society, Arlington in the morning on November 1. We will present a few selections from “Concert II: A Casual Concert” which will be performed, in full, at 7:00 pm that evening.

You can purchase tickets for the November 1 concert at www.lagrandebande.org/tickets