Overview:

The choral oratorio about the life of Shepard, who died of his injuries after a brutal beating that sparked outrage around anti-gay hate crimes, focuses on his life rather than his well-known death.

Before his name was on federal legislation, before he became synonymous with hate crimes, before Oct. 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard was an ordinary young man.

Shepard, a 21-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was easy to talk to, an openly gay student in a rural place who formed fast friendships. 

But shortly after midnight on Oct. 7, Shepard was abducted by two men and driven to a field east of Laramie. He was brutally beaten with a pistol and left tied to a split-rail fence overnight, discovered the next morning by a passing bicyclist who at first thought he was a scarecrow. He died of his injuries on Oct. 12.

Craig Hella Johnson, then the music director of San Francisco vocal ensemble Chanticleer, said he’ll never forget hearing about Shepard’s death in the moments before a rehearsal started. He said that as a gay man, he was pulled to respond.

“I just felt like I had to,” he said. “It was one of those vocational callings that came from a deep place.”

That later came in the form of “Considering Matthew Shepard,” his 2016 Grammy-nominated choral oratorio. The work weaves Shepard’s journal writings, interviews with Shepard’s parents, Judy and Dennis, and works from modern poets and ancient luminaries like Rumi and Hildegard of Bingen into contemplative choral performances.

Johnson, now one of two artistic partners running the creative side of the Oregon Bach Festival, is bringing “Considering Matthew Shepard” to the opening weekend of the festival. While it may seem out of place to open a festival centered on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the opening of the oratorio quotes Bach’s “Prelude in C Major.” 

Johnson said the broader connection is using narrative to reach wider audiences, like Bach did with his St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion for everyday parishioners in Leipzig; Johnson hopes to do the same with modern works like “Considering Matthew Shepard” at the Bach Festival. 

The approach was informed by Johnson’s time studying in Germany with Helmuth Rilling, one of the festival’s founders. There, Johnson paid keen attention to how Bach guided listeners through a story’s emotional beats.

“He takes them by the hand and says, ‘This music is also for you,’” he said. “I learned so much about taking care of an audience, and bringing them with you.”

Bringing an ‘ordinary boy’ to life again

Shepard’s death has inspired high-profile works like the play (and later, film) “The Laramie Project,” based on more than 200 interviews with Laramie residents responding to the aftermath of Shepard’s death. 

Shepard’s death is, of course, part of “Considering Matthew Shepard,” which places him on the fence around 15 minutes into the oratorio. But Johnson said it was important he didn’t make the work about “Matthew the victim” or “Matthew the icon.”

“There’s so much in the telling of Matthew Shepard that is now sort of extraordinary,” he said. “It’s a big deal. But Judy and Dennis were always saying to me, ‘You know, he was really ordinary.’”

On a stage lit with blue and purple hues, Brian Giebler, playing Matthew Shepard in the choral oratorio "Considering Matthew Shepard," is seated on a woven trunk in the center foreground. He is wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, looking down at a book or journal in his lap. Behind him, a large screen displays handwritten text. Several other performers are present on various levels of the stage set, which appears to be a raised, textured platform. To the left, a woman in a long dress and boots stands, and to the right, another woman in a red jacket and blue skirt stands. Other figures are visible in the background, some seated. In the immediate foreground, the back of a seated man is visible, and microphone stands are in the blurred foreground.
“Considering Matthew Shepard” features screen projections of Shepard’s handwriting from his journal. Craig Hella Johnson said he wanted the work to show Shepard as an ordinary boy, and included some of Shepard’s diary writings verbatim to have his voice in the oratorio. Credit: Robert Silver / Used courtesy of Conspirare and Texas Performing Arts

The second movement of the show, accordingly, is “Ordinary Boy.” 

Brian Giebler, the performer who has played Shepard since 2021, said that because he’s 38 years old and not 21, he takes extra care to embody the energetic, “high on life” youthful attitude that Shepard had. 

The difference in their ages also means it’s hard for Giebler to not think of the life he’s lived since he was 21. The experiences he’s had that Shepard never saw, like getting married and becoming a father, come to mind especially during his solo number “In Need of Breath.”

“Who knows, maybe he would have had just an ordinary life, and he would have had a great life of being Matthew Shepard,” Giebler said. “Who’s to say where he would have gone or what he would have done. But he didn’t have the opportunity to do that.”

The fence, the deer and Matthew

Shepard was tied to the fence for 18 hours. Though the story of his beating and ultimate death is bleak, an almost divine presence is felt throughout “Considering Matthew Shepard” to keep him company. 

The fence itself takes on a maternal role in the oratorio, singing that it held Shepard all night. It later becomes a witness to the outpouring of grief for him, the site of flowers and memorials left at the fence.

Or, there’s “Deer Song.” In real life, when the sheriff came to find Shepard, a deer was sitting by the base of the fence. She felt the ground after it left and said it was very warm to the touch, as if the deer had been sitting beside Shepard for hours through the night. 

Inspired by that story, Johnson wrote “Deer Song” for a chorus of three women playing the deer. They sing: “All night I lay there beside you, I cradled your pain in my care / We move through creation together, And we know there’s a welcoming there.”

In the almost decade since the oratorio first premiered, Johnson said he’s grown to appreciate that Shepard’s story shows no one is ever truly alone, even in bleak times.

“Somehow in our darkest moments, in moments that might feel utterly alone and despairing, creation finds a way to meet us in those moments,” Johnson said. 

How to see ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’ 

The performance is at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 28 in Silva Concert Hall at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Eugene. Many sections have sold out, but tickets for seats in the front orchestra are available for purchase online.

Composer and Bach Festival artistic partner Johnson will host a preconcert talk at 6:30 p.m. in the Silva.

Annie Aguiar is the Arts and Culture Correspondent. She has reported arts news and features for national and local newsrooms, including at the Seattle Times, the Washington Post and most recently as a reporting fellow for the New York Times’ Culture desk covering arts and entertainment.