The Little Match Girl Passion

Ekmeles bring David Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion to the Stage at St. Andrews (Halifax United Church) on Saturday, December 19, as part of the Cecilia Concerts 2026/27 main stage season. The New York vocal ensemble is led by conductor Jeffrey Gavett, and the evening centres on Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

The Little Match Girl Passion takes its title and story from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, but it's built around the structure of J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion. It's written for four voices with simple percussion, and for Ekmeles it's become a pre-holiday tradition in Manhattan through the city's 'Death of Classical' concert series. The evening doesn't stop there, though: the programme also includes works by Kaija Saariaho, Ben Johnston and Petros Leivadas.

Ekmeles is an internationally recognised New York ensemble known for new and rarely heard vocal music, with a particular focus on microtonal repertoire — the kind of music that works with the intervals between the standard notes of a scale. The New York Times has praised them for their 'extraordinary sense of pitch,' which is exactly the kind of thing that matters when you're dealing with microtonality. This is their first time bringing the piece to Halifax.

The concert starts at 7:30 pm, and tickets run from C$30.00 to C$42.00. The venue is accessible.