Grammy-winner and Texas State Artist-in-Residence Craig Hella Johnson and his Austin-based choral ensemble Conspirare gave the first Chicago-area performance of Johnson’s monumental work, Considering Matthew Shepard, at the Ravinia Festival’s Martin Theatre. The performance included TXST instrumental music faculty Ames Asbell and Vanguel Tangarov. The Chicago Tribune published an admiring review of the performance and the piece, describing it as “a stylistically free-ranging score that carried echoes of Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber but also old-fashioned hymnody and raw and cathartic blues. It was dispatched persuasively by choristers, who took turns playing various characters; instrumentalists who provided atmosphere and color . . .” and as an expression that “became much more than just one man’s story. In some respects, it was everyone’s story, a reflection on human travails and heavenly aspirations.”