College choirs prepare for Tacoma performance of ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’
Almost 30 years after University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard died at the hands of a violent hate crime, multiple Washington college choirs are putting on their rendition of an avant-garde musical performance to honor his life.
A 140-person combined choir of students from the University of Washington and Seattle University will take to the Pantages Theater stage on Friday to perform “Considering Matthew Shepard,” a three-part oratorio that fuses not just universities, but also genres and performance styles.
In 1998, 21-year-old Shepard was brutally attacked, tied to a fence in a field and left to die. The tragic passing of the young gay man sparked major media attention and eventually led to the passing of hate crime legislation across the United States.
The composer Craig Hella Johnson took inspiration from Shepard’s story to create a modern-day composition that includes chant, bluegrass, gospel music, classical music and more.
The Grammy-nominated composition premiered in 2016 and since then hundreds of choirs have tackled the piece, including one that Tacoma resident and Seattle University Music Program Director Dr. Leann Conley-Holcom was a part of in 2025.
The enduring message of the piece stuck with her, and when it came time to use a periodic grant from the Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts, “Considering Matthew Shepard” felt necessary to tackle on a large scale. So, she worked with UW Director of Choral Activities Dr. Geoff Boers, another Tacoma resident, to make it happen.
“Prejudice and bias-based violence is still very much a part of our society,” Conley-Holcom said.
The performance will be conducted by Conley-Holcom, Boers and UW Professor of Choral Music Giselle Wyers.
The choir directors realized through the process that many students, even members of the LGBTQ+ community, didn’t know of Shepard’s story. The work was a learning opportunity not just in terms of music, but also in terms of history.
“The title of ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’ is very purposeful, right?” Conley-Holcom said. “It’s an invitation for the singers and the instrumentalists and also the audience, to kind of be present with a really difficult story.”
This is the most impactful piece Seattle University student and Tacoma native Jaylen Leonard has worked on in her three years in choir department.
“It’s considering Matthew and considering how we moved as a community, as people when we hear stuff like this,” Leonard said. “I think it’s so important because if we don’t recognize these things, if we just [...] turn the other way, we could all be like this.”
Part of the performance includes a prop fence on stage representing the very barrier that Shepard was tied to for 18 hours the night of his brutal beating.
Different people and choirs sing the role of this fence throughout the piece, anthropomorphizing the object in an unusual but necessary way, Boers said.
“The hope is that no matter what a person’s worldview is or faith persuasion or your history or family history, no matter what it is, you’ll find stuff that you relate to and stuff that offends you,” Boers said. “The piece never goes that far into making a point that one side is really wrong or the bad person and the other person is a martyr and to be worshiped.”
The Tacoma performance will take place 8 p.m. on March 6 at the Pantages Theater as a headliner performance for the Northwest Region American Choral Directors Association conference. Tickets are available to the public.
