Interview: Craig Hella Johnson on the enduring impact of 'Considering Matthew Shepard'

In the fall of 1998, “I was watching with the rest of the world as it zoomed in on Laramie, Wyoming,” says composer/conductor Craig Hella Johnson. A young gay man named Matthew Shepard had been beaten and left to die, sparking grief and outrage across the country and the globe.

To Johnson, the news felt visceral. “It pierced me,” he says. “I guess I would say that something was planted in me that day that ended up being a soulful vocational calling.” The result was the 2016 oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard, which Minnesota audiences can hear performed by Rochester’s Choral Arts Ensemble in five concerts at the Chateau Theatre from Oct. 24 to Nov. 1.

Yes, the gestation of the three-part opus was a lengthy one. “I felt the call, but it took me a long time before I felt really willing and able to do anything with it,” Johnson says. “Years went by. I was thinking, how could I possibly do this story justice?”

With the Texas-based choral group Conspirare, which he founded, Johnson had been conducting emotive works such as Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, “so uppermost in my mind, it was the story of suffering, a passion narrative. The passion of Matthew Shepard.”

A northern Minnesota native who attended St. Olaf College, Johnson first conceived the work as a song cycle, but realized the subject demanded something larger. After Conspirare performed eight movements in 2014, getting a powerful response from both singers and audience members, Johnson set about to complete the work. He combined poetry and writings from Michael Dennis Browne, Lesléa Newman, Hildegard of Bingen and Rumi to help tell the story.

Perhaps most powerful and poignant were passages from Shepard’s personal journal and writings from his parents. “I wanted to include Matt Shepard—his mother called him Matt, before all these dreadful things happened—who was he? That’s what the Prologue became.”

The “passion” portion comprises the middle section of the work, and the Epilogue served the function of “how do we exit this and meet this moment?”

Indeed, in the 10 years since the work’s premiere, the moment has endured. “When I wrote it, I guess I would say I had a naïve notion that it would be a historical piece: ‘This will help us remember so it doesn’t happen again,’” Johnson says.

“Sadly, it does feel absolutely more relevant and timely than ever. We have a dreadful human habit of projecting unresolved issues in ourselves onto the other. It’s alive and well in our world right now.”

But Johnson is comforted by the effect Considering Matthew Shepard has had on audiences over the past 10 years. “I’ve been humbled by it, and also in awe of where this piece has gone, and how it’s been engaged with. I wrote from my own heart, not looking ahead and not knowing it would have such an extended life.

“That’s been really meaningful; it still does connect with an overall issue we have not yet addressed and healed.”

Johnson estimates that the oratorio has been performed more than 200 times worldwide. Every time he personally conducts the work, with Conspirare or other groups, he finds new insights. “Certain things will have an emotional impact in any given performance, depending on where I am in life or even what day it is,” he says.

“I watch the artists, and they have different reactions. Sometimes they’re singing and they feel it, but it doesn’t impact them. That same moment two nights later they might have a different reaction.

“I want [singers] to be in their humanity as they share this. If they need to pop out for several phrases, I watch other singers rally and fill in, which is moving to witness as well.”

The effect on audiences has been similarly profound. Johnson says there hasn’t been a performance when he hasn’t gotten messages from people who have been deeply affected. And it has been restorative for those facing the same issues the work examines.

“One thing that’s consistent—it’s frequently a catalyst for families to talk,” he says. For those having a difficult time coming out as gay or transgender, “their families had an incredible opportunity to talk afterward, to really have fruitful conversations. Something about Matt’s story brings a lot of empathy.

“I tried to write this piece in a way that’s not combative or taking ideological positions. ‘Consideration’ is a really beautiful word. It invites you to live with the story, allow yourself to feel, without dictating a response. What questions does it raise? Over and over, families have had moments of renewal. That is very special to me.”

College communities and other institutions that have hosted concerts have had their time of reckoning as well, Johnson says, when protests or concerns have arisen. “It forces an institution to have those conversations, meet those questions and those issues,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to state their values, and I’m very touched by that.”

Johnson says he could talk for “two or three hours” about performances that have particularly moved him. But he zeroed in a couple of special ones.

Conspirare was invited to perform several movements of the oratorio at a 2018 service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where Shepard’s ashes were to be laid to rest. Bishop Gene Robinson led the nationally televised service in which Shepard’s parents, Judy and Dennis, sat in the front row.

“Judy said that for the first time in over 20 years, they felt peaceful, that Matt was safe in that sanctuary,” Johnson says. “I was sort of sobbing, but I also felt incredible joy, to feel the community that day.”

Judy Shepard also figured in another memorable concert, at Boston’s Symphony Hall on a cold Super Bowl Sunday; it was the first time she’d heard the work live, observing it quietly from the back row.

As for the upcoming concerts in Rochester, Johnson says he’s touched that the Choral Arts Ensemble is opening its season with five performances of Considering Matthew Shepard. He had this advice and hope for those who attend.

“I really want people to have their own unique experience with it,” he says. “At the center, Matt Shepard’s name is in the title, but the main character is the listener, the individual whose consideration I am inviting and proposing. That’s really where I want to place the emphasis.

“In a musical sense, I wrote in the oratorio tradition, which has a storytelling tradition that’s centuries old. People long for a musical form they can he held inside of and be drawn into.

“Go in thinking of the whole thing as a meditation.”

Considering Matthew Shepard
Performed by: Choral Arts Ensemble
Concerts: 7 p.m. Oct. 24 & 30, 3 p.m. Oct. 25, 31 & Nov. 1; 810 3rd Ave. SE, 2nd Floor, Rochester, Minn.
Tickets: $10-$45, chorartsensemble.org