The Dessoff Choirs presents the New York premiere of Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, a three-part fusion oratorio about Matthew Shepard, a young, gay student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, who was kidnapped, severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die. The story is illustrated by incorporating a variety of musical styles seamlessly woven into a unified whole.

A wide range of poetic and soulful texts by poets including Hildegard of Bingen, Lesléa Newman, Michael Dennis Browne, and Rumi. Passages from Matt’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.