The Dessoff Choirs presents David Lang’s the little match girl passion, a work that evokes passion through stasis, repetition, and the unexpected combination of percussion instruments with voices. The composer describes his inspiration for setting the text:

What drew me to The Little Match Girl is that the strength of the story lies not in its plot but in the fact that the horror and the beauty are constantly suffused with their opposites. Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus.

In addition, Dessoff performs J.S. Bach’s Komm Jesu, komm, the fourth installment (over three seasons) of Bach’s six motets and as part of our Bernstein tribute, his Chichester Psalms.