La Petite Bande

La Petite Bande is a Belgian early music ensemble founded in 1972 by violinist and conductor Sigiswald Kuijken. Originally assembled as a one-off studio group to record Lully's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, it has since earned a strong reputation for its interpretations of French and German Baroque repertoire and the works of Haydn and Mozart on period instruments. Spanning approximately five decades of consistent activity, the ensemble has produced over 80 recordings across multiple labels. These include landmark interpretations of Corelli's Concerti Grossi Op. 6 (1977-78), Monteverdi's Vespers (2008), a box set of all the Mozart-Da Ponte operas (2022), Schütz's Musikalische Exequien (2015), and the complete Bach cantata cycle on Accent (2005-2014). La Petite Bande released Johann Sebastian Bach: The Harpsichord Concertos, Vol. 2 in 2026, a project that began in 2022. Kuijken found the ensemble of musicians he had organized for the Lully recording project in 1972 so successful that he began to organize concerts for them of French Baroque music. From there, they expanded to Italian masters such as Corelli and then began to explore J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, and many more. The ensemble has performed across Europe, Australia, South America, and Asia. A defining project was the complete calendar cycle of Bach's cantatas starting in 2005, wherein Kuijken created a novel chamber-ensemble feel based on the research of some music historians by assigning only one vocalist to each choral part. Since 2012, La Petite Bande has organized a summer academy for musicians to study Baroque and Classical historical performance practice and partners with academic institutions such as KU Leuven for research projects. Marie Kuijken took over as its artistic director in 2025. ~ Jane Harrison, Rovi