The 22/23 Concert Season
Upcoming Events
Handel's Messiah (Postponed)
Performance Postponed to April 2024
This program has been postponed to April 2024. Purchased tickets will be fully refunded.
Handel’s Messiah has been a beloved holiday tradition for generations. Often performed before Christmas, Handel’s first performance took place during Easter 1741 in Dublin. Join La Grande Bande as we present classical music’s most beloved work during Eastertide 2023.
The complete Messiah will be performed using period instruments. Soloists will come from La Grande Bande’s choir, La chœur de La Grande Bande, and the choir will be joined by area college students for each performance.
Supper & Songs (May 2023)
Regular Season Concert 4
7:00 | Thursday, May 25 | Arlington Haus Too, Arlington^
7:00 | Friday, May 26 | Black Forest Inn, Minneapolis
^ Please note the change of start time from 7:30 to 7:00pm for this performance
La Grande Bande’s “Dine Out” concert experience continues with a selection of light-hearted and comedic works sure to lift your spirits. The most famous of these is, of course, Bach’s Coffee Cantata and Monteverdi’s Zefiro torna.
Both pieces poke fun at cultural phenomena of their day: for Bach, it was the new fashioned drink coffee (which he himself loved!); for Monteverdi, it was the over-the-top, melodramatic madrigals.
Join us for a special evening of food, songs, and conversation as we close the 2022-2023 season in La Grande Bande’s much-beloved tradition.
Past Events
Splendors of Baroque Italy (February 2023)
Regular Season Concert 3
7:30 | Thursday, February 9 | Immanuel Lutheran Church, Gaylord
7:30 | Friday, February 10 | Olivet Congregational Church, St Paul*
An evening of vocal music by Giulio Caccini & his daughters Francesca & Settimia
Nothing screams “Baroque” to me more than the early forms of Baroque Italian song. This entire program is an exploration of exactly that: early Italian baroque vocal music written by its first composers. Our program has an even more special significance because it features three composers from the same family.
Working in the Medici Court for a good share of their lives, the Caccini family is one of music history’s most important and most forgotten contributors. While Giulio Caccini is remembered well, his daughters, Francesca and Settimia are not. Join us as we explore music written by the Caccini Family
A French Baroque Christmas (December 2022)
Holiday Concert
CANCELLED 7:30 | Thursday, December 8 | Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Rochester
7:30 | Friday, December 9 | Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, New Ulm
7:30 | Saturday, December 10 | St Paul-Reformation Lutheran, St Paul*
Experience the beauty of the season with a selection of works written for Christmas by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The concert centers on Charpentier’s Pastorale sur la Naissance de nostre Jesus Christ (“Pastoral on the birth of Christ”), one of the most captivating and imaginative examples of sacred French-language Baroque drama.
From shepherds and recorders to famous French noëls you can join us in singing, you’ll surely be transfixed by everything this concert has to offer.
Romantic Quartets (November 2022)
Regular Season Concert 2
7:30 | Thursday, November 10 | First Lutheran Church, Winthrop
7:30 | Friday, November 11 | Olivet Congregational Church, St Paul
Nothing is more synonymous with chamber music than the string quartet. Once used as a compositional training tool for young composers in the classical era, the string quartet became an avenue in which composers of all ages could experiment with new techniques or show off their musical achievements. From Mozart to Elgar, composers across generations and countries found themselves a home in the genre famous for its pair of violins, viola, and violoncello serenading both players and listeners.
In this concert, La Grande Bande’s quartet of string players will perform selections by Austrian composer Josef Haydn, Italian-born and Spanish-employed Gaetano Brunetti, and English composer Sir Charles Vilers Stanford.
Sonatas from Bohemia & Poland (September 2022)
Regular Season Concert 1
7:30 | Thursday, September 15 | First Lutheran Church, St Peter*
7:30 | Saturday, September 17 | Holy Cross Catholic Church, Minneapolis
With music that is evocative and rarely explored, this program highlights music written by some of Eastern Europe’s most prominent composers. With works by Czeh and Polish composers, this program showcases some of the virtuosic sonatas, artfully crafted fugues, and chamber works written in the era’s most popular and fantastic style, the stylus phantasticus. While several composers on this program gained fame while working for the Hapsburg court in Vienna, like Benda and Biber, none of them lost their Polish or Czech roots.
As a nod to our Music & Artistic Director’s Polish ancestry, we’re delighted to explore and share some of what Polish, Czech, and Viennese ears were hearing in the aristicratic courts of Baroque Europe.
* Please note the change in venue for concerts marked with an asterisk.