Lately I’ve had my head in music. Losing myself in music seems to help find a way through the world.

Music plays a large role in my life; I hope it does in yours as well. There are a handful of pierces that I link with important events: “Brigg Fair” for example, by Frederick Delius, helped me get through the death of my grandmother in 1980. I can’t hear it even today without welling up and blubbering. Recently I’ve become captivated by Michael Torke’s newest recording “Miami Grands” and the potential one of the tracks has for an event I’ll be part of next August.

Music has been important for Agincourt, too. The community’s 50th anniversary yielded a commissioned work from John Philip Sousa, his “March to Agincourt” which should be better known than it is. For the centennial, the city reached even farther afield, asking Sir William Walton to weave several of his recent pieces for film—especially “Henry V” starring Sir Lawrence Olivier—into the “Agincourt Suite” for band. Then, of course, there is “Agincourt Fanfare” written for the 150th in 2007, a new work by out friend Daron Hagen. He’s written a new work—”We happy few” for tenor and piano—that will be premiered at the exhibit of 2015, commemorating the 600th anniversary of the actual Battle of Agincourt.

Musical themes run so richly through the history of Agincourt that there must have been an institution for its teaching, promotion, and performance; something akin to a Conservatory. Fargo had one. So, when I saw the Jan Hatvani portrait, I knew its subject must have had something to do with making music and then making it important to Agincourt. Hatvani is real, by the way, but his subject Per-Edvard-Anders Lund [1900-1977] is fiction. But in him I see the fulcrum of a long, rich musical thread to link all these and other events in some way.

That conservatory, not incidentally, will require a home, and that’s all the impetus I need.