Artist-in-Residence Dr. Craig Hella Johnson was recently interviewed by Fox News’ Bryan Llenas for their America Together segment in celebration of Pride month.
The two spoke spoke on Johnson’s life from growing up in northern Minnesota mining town in a religious family moving forward learning to accept himself. Llenas says “music and the stage saved his life.” It was “the one place that [he] could be totally authentic,” says Johnson. In pursuit of this feeling of authenticity, he has been on a mission to help others “find their light.” His longtime friend Sandra Derby says “one of Craig’s many gifts is his ability to encourage people to bring their whole selves to a performance.”
“When you can create a space where people feel safe to express from their natural gift, authentically, that’s when the real deepest beauty begins,” says Johnson. He established the choir Conspirare in 1991 which won the Grammy for best choral performance in 2015. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Texas Medal of the Arts.
One piece Conspirare performs is Johnson’s own “Considering Matthew Shepherd,” a concert honoring the life of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man who lost his life in a hate crime in 1998. This piece was Johnson’s “coming out as a composer.”
Johnson’s message to the youth in the LGBTQ+ community is to “find the courage to love yourself so fully. You have something so beautiful and unique to offer. Please offer it to the world, because the world is less if you don’t.”
Click here to view the full interview.