The Choral Society of NE PA presents "Considering Matthew Shephard"

Date and Time for this Past Event

• Sunday, Apr 16, 2023  4pm

Location

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Details

The Choral Society of Northeast PA joins with the Bloomsburg University Choirs to mount the regional
premiere of an important and moving new work, Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard.
Composed in 2016 to remind and meditate on the 1998 hate-crime murder of a gay Wyoming college student who was kidnapped, severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in a lonely field, this oratorio
incorporates a variety of musical styles and sets an equally wide range of poetic and soulful texts by poets including Hildegard of Bingen, Lesléa Newman, Michael Dennis Browne, and Rumi. Passages from Shepard’s personal journal, interviews and writings from his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard, newspaper reports and additional texts by Johnson and Browne are poignantly appointed throughout the work. The Washington Post has said that the work “demonstrates music’s capacity to encompass, transform and transcend tragedy. Powerfully cathartic, it leads us from horror and grief to a higher understanding of the human condition, enabling us to endure.”