More alike than different

University of Idaho vocal performance major Derek Carson first performed a song from composer Craig Hella Johnson’s “Considering Matthew Shepard” as a student at Centennial High School in Boise.

“It’s been a big part of my life ever since,” said Carson, who will graduate from UI in the spring.
The Grammy-nominated work employs diverse musical styles, narration and poetry to tell the story of the gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998, sparking a wave of LGBTQ activism.

“It states the events really blatantly and so beautifully,” Carson said. “It makes you feel the emotions that the world was feeling at the time of the event. It really captures the pain, the fear that a lot of people were feeling.”

On Saturday, Dec. 2, he’ll perform in a full production of the oratorio, as three UI choirs and an instrumental ensemble join for a 3 p.m. concert in the UI Administration Building auditorium.

Derek Renzelman, a vocal performance major from Lewiston also set to graduate in the spring, learned about the oratorio from Carson early in his college career.

“I instantly fell in love with it,” Renzelman said. “Even if I listen to it all the way through ri  ght now, there are no fewer than three or four times when I’m like fully crying when I listen to it.”

Renzelman and Carson brought the piece to professor and choral director David Klement, who was struck by its moving story, wide array of musical styles and generous solo opportunities.

This year, with the 25th anniversary of Shepard’s death in October, seemed like the right time to perform it, Klement said.

“This work has been our passion all semester long,” he said. “It has proven to be really, really meaningful to our students.”


Saturday’s concert will be followed by a “speak out” led by staff members from the university’s LGBTQA office and counseling center, with student participation.

“It’s a chance to kind of unpack what people experienced during the performance and what moved t hem,” Klement said.

He’s heard of no concerns about the work being performed on the UI campus, he said, though “some colleagues in other states say ‘Wow. You’re doing that in Idaho?’ ”

Without exception, he said, his students are passionate about the performance.

“I think it’s important that we do do it,” he said.

Carson, who said he feels overwhelmingly supported on the Moscow campus but occasionally sees individuals displaying signs with anti-gay messages, agreed.

“I think it’s really bold to do it at this time in northern Idaho, at a time when divisions are growing rapidly,” he said. “I think it’s so important for us to be doing this work. It stares you straight in the face and says ‘We’re gonna tell you this story. We won’t let you forget it.’ ”

Lori Conlon Khan, a longtime music teacher in the Boise School District and now a UI professor, said experiencing Shepard’s story through the piece has been profoundly moving.

“I remember being that safe space for those students in my classroom and in our home,” Conlon Khan said. “It really resonates with me.”
She remembers when Shepard was murdered and the scenes that unfolded afterward as members of the Westboro Baptist Church carried signs outside his funeral with hateful messages on them.

“The protesters at his funeral — it was just awful,” she said.

Words from those signs are part of the oratorio, and Conlon Khan recalled a student early on in rehearsals being shocked about singing the line “The only good fag is a fag that’s dead.”

“I think it was really appalling to this student,” Conlon Khan said. “It’s part of the story; it’s part of the narrative. It was such a tragedy, and that was how this group of protestors reacted.”


Shepard’s murder and the reactions to it, which some students were learning about for the first time, also led to positive change, she said.

“I think that Matthew’s death — and this is just my opinion because I remember that well — was a catalyst to the LGBTQA rights movement and more awareness of that community,” Conlon Khan said.

“Considering Matthew Shepard” shaped Carson’s understanding and perspective on the gay rights movement, as a young gay man who wasn’t yet born when Shepard was killed.

“It started the third wave of the queer liberation movement,” he said, noting the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City and the AIDS crisis in the 1980s as the first two.

That third wave ushered in marriage equality, he said, and “since then it’s continued to blossom and grow and change the country.”

Rehearsing for Saturday’s performance has been a history lesson, exploration of current events and emotional exercise, Conlon Khan said, but ultimately it has been a source of joy.

“It’s just such a beautiful work. There are some very heavy pieces, but overall it’s very uplifting.”

The critical theme that emerges, Renzelman said, is the truth — sometimes comforting, sometimes challenging — that all people are more alike than they are different.

“That’s an amazing and a really good thing,” he said. “But also that goes for anyone, whatever their past is, whatever they have done. You are still more similar to those who perpetrated this awful thing and this awful way to think (than you are different).”

Stone (she/her) can be reached at mstone@inland360.com.

IF YOU GO

“Considering Matthew Shepard”

When: 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2.

Where: University of Idaho Administration Building auditorium, 851 Campus Drive, Moscow.

Tickets: $10; click on Lionel Hampton School of Music at uitickets.com.

Of note: The oratorio — about 1 hour, 40 minutes with no intermission — explores the life of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was abducted and murdered in 1998. The University of Idaho’s Vandaleers Concert Choir, Treble Choir and Tenor Bass Ensemble join an instrumental ensemble of instructors and students for the performance.