Naumenko Tours with Grammy Award-winning Conspirare in National Tour of Johnson’s ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’

In October, Assistant Professor of Voice Fotina Naumenko, D.M.A., will tour with Grammy Award-winning ensemble Conspirare in its 2018/19 national tour of Craig Hella Johnson’s “Considering Matthew Shepard.”

“For me personally, the most striking aspect of this work is its loving and hopeful tone in the face of tragedy and adversity,” said Dr. Naumenko. “The piece asks questions that are important now just as much as in 1998: how do we put aside our differences, and live and love better? How do we find connection and a common language instead of labeling people as ‘other’?”

Naumenko will tour with this project throughout the year, but the highlight of the season is the concert in Laramie, Wyoming, on Oct. 6, on the 20th anniversary of the night Matthew Shepard was attacked.

About “Considering Matthew Shepard”

Conspirare’s current touring project, “Considering Matthew Shepard,” is a Grammy-nominated three-part oratorio composed by Craig Hella Johnson. The work, which debuted at number four on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Chart, is an evocative and compassionate musical response to the murder of Matthew Shepard. Matthew Shepard was a young, gay college student at the University of Wyoming who in October 1998 was kidnapped, severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in a lonely field under a blanket of stars. When Shepard passed away, five days later, an offended world looked on. Johnson had a profoundly personal reaction to both the murder and its resonance.

“Considering Matthew Shepard” transports listeners through a tapestry of musical textures and idioms in a poignant concert experience inspiring hope, compassion, and empowerment. The Washington Post called the work “powerfully cathartic,” and wrote “Like Bach’s large-scale choral works, this spellbinding piece draws on many styles masterfully juxtaposed, though Johnson’s sources are the American vernacular. A Prologue, Passion and Epilogue … combine spoken text, cowboy song, American hymnody and popular song, spirituals, jazz and dazzling polyphony, all woven into a seamless tapestry. The impact is immediate, profound and, at times, overwhelming.”

Visit conspirare.org/event/considering-matthew-shepard-encore-2018/ to learn more.