In October 1998, 21-year-old student Matthew Wayne Shepard came to death in a cruel manner. The international press reported extensively on the targetedly accomplished close-up crucifixion of the homosexual boy by a fellow student, and in the United States, as a result of this hate crime, pro as well as contra homosexuality protests went on for months. After a process in which the perpetrator, among other things, defended himself as having felt threatened by the homosexuality of Shepard, politics finally considered as their duty to legally impose hate crimes against homosexuals with a higher punishment than "normal" killing delicts. The corresponding law, the "Hate Crimes Prevention Act", was signed by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, eleven years after the terrible bloody death.
Among other pop stars, Elton John dedicated a song to the sad story of Matthew Wayne Shepard - American Triangle - and Hollywood reacted with The Laramie Project and The Matthew Wayne Shepard Story. For the fact that Matthew Wyne Shepard is still doing the US-American society after 20 years, the oratorio of the choral conductor, arranger and composer Craig Hella Johnson, has just been premiered. Johnson, among others, made a name for himself in the choral world as the founder and director of the multi-Grammy Award-winning Texan Ensemble Conspirare, which ensemble, supported by a chamber orchestra is molding Considering Matthew Shepard virtuosically and touchingly.
The lyrics and music of the three-part oratorio are a patchwork that could only be created in the USA: Hildegard von Bingen, Lesléa Newman, Hafiz, and Michael Dennis Browne are accompanied by passages from Matthew Wayne Shepard's diary, interviews with his parents and newspaper reports. The whole is set in an almost adventurous mix or fusion of formal church music and gospel and even country music and rhythmic borrowings from Westsidestory. With all the adventures, the mix does not only have system, it works, but it also transports exactly the right emotion for the oratorically detailed demonstrated situation of the crime, its preparation and the reappraisal by the justice, press and society.
Matthew Shepard is not an easily digestible matter alone because of its subject. The success of this oratorio is largely due to the excellent, precisely led and acting chorus, which comprehensively realizes the crass diverging expressions of the oratorio and brings them together into a convincing whole. A must-hear. Not at least because of the excellent acoustic realization of this download.
Conspirare
Craig Hella Johnson, artistic director, conductor
Recorded February 29–March 3, 2016 at Sauder Concert Hall, Goshen College, IN