The Little Match Girl Passion

Saturday, February 23, 2019 | 8:00 pm | Tickets: $30
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Laurelhurst
4805 NE 45th Street, Seattle

David Lang’s the little match girl passion is regularly hailed as a modern masterpiece for vocal ensemble. It recounts Hans Christian Andersen’s story of a girl who freezes to death while attempting to sell matches on the city streets at New Year’s Eve. Lang powerfully elaborates on the story by adding elements of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, linking the match girl’s plight with Christ’s and making her a symbol for all humanity. We will present this ethereal soundscape in its original version for four vocal soloists also playing percussion.

Home to Heaven, by Virginia-based composer William Averitt, collects five arrangements of nineteenth-century shape-note songs. These sacred texts and often raucous tunes joyfully depict a simple but rich faith in a better world that awaits us all. A similar respect for the eternal pervades Technicians of the Sacred, six settings of native and aboriginal poems by local composer David Hahn. This hour-long concert considers how we are all connected to the earth, to eternity, and to each other.

See concert program, with program notes and texts.

Repertoire

• David Hahn (b.1956) – Technicians of the Sacred
  – world premiere performance
• David Lang (b.1957) – the little match girl passion
  – version for vocal quartet
• William Averitt (b.1948) – Home to Heaven
  – first performance of the revised version

Performing Artists

• Clarice Alfonso, soprano
• Gary D. Cannon, conductor
• David Hendrix, tenor
• Jim Howeth, tenor
• Natalie Ingrisano, soprano
• Christine Knackstedt, mezzo-soprano
• Maria Männistö, soprano
• Jonathan Silvia, bass-baritone
• Kathryn Weld, mezzo-soprano
• Robin Wyatt-Stone, baritone
• Kathea Yarnell, mezzo-soprano