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He

considers

. “ at was intentional,” he

explains. “If I express all my anger, I get

in the way of someone else experiencing

theirs. I want people to have their own

experience. We don’t shy away from

what happened; the brutal part of the

story is present. I believe in oratorio

as a conduit for the universal, so that

means I need to get out of the way.”

Johnson’s insight is particularly pointed

in the interlude “I Am Like You” which

challenges listeners to examine their

own potential for projection of hatred.

“We have the audience members sit for

four minutes with very quiet music,

unadorned, with lots of rests in between,

having to feel the words. Am I like you?

In what way do I allow my fears to be

projected on the ‘other’ to live a sense of

that separate self? People saw the truth

in what happened to Matt Shepard; that

hatred based in fear is real. And we all

experience that.”

Johnson’s compositional style has

been described as “collage,” a pastiche

of disparate in uences with bits of pop,

folk, and jazz coursing through an

essentially classical structure. e work

begins, appropriately for what is fun-

damentally a Passion, with a quotation

from Bach; the opening measures of

Ave

Maria

. e initial choral entrance then

gives way to an idiomatic cowboy song,

which immediately establishes locale.

“I wanted to allow a naturalness for a

modern audience,” Johnson explains.

“ ere is a big part of me that is pretty

straight-up orthodox choral guy. I

trained in Bach. I love those big forms. I

have a foot rmly planted in the canon,

and I could be happy living my life with

them, the Passions and the Elgar things.

e commitment to oratorio was also

there. I am sad to see that form die away.

ere are not many composers writing

oratorio anymore; it certainly isn’t in our

listening palate all that much, so I am

interested in keeping this larger story-

telling medium in play. I also was inter-

ested, for musical and cultural reasons,

to have as broad an audience as possi-

ble invited in. I wanted both musical

RAVINIA MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 – MAY 11, 2019

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