The first half of the program features works that frame the concept of mortality in different ways, including Rautavaara’s Suite de Lorca, Runestad’s Let My Love Be Heard, and movements from Howell’s Requiem. An unexpected pairing of David Lang’s oh graveyard (lay this body down) and Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory’s Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down previews the struggle between death and life found in the second half of the concert.

The second half of the program features Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4). This chorale cantata is among Bach’s earliest compositions in the genre and sets all seven verses of Martin Luther’s chorale, “Christ lay in death’s bonds.” The text, used on Easter Sunday, centers on the struggle between Life and Death, the triumph of Light over Darkness, and the Resurrection. Bach features the chorale melody and text prominently in every movement and in every voice – including the accompanying 5-part strings – presenting the chorale in unaltered form and then in subsequent exciting variations. In the spirit of the genre, the audience can be expected to learn the hymn tune and join the choir at the end of the cantata. The concert will close with the final movement from Craig Hella Johnson’s oratorio, Considering Matthew Shepard, which recounts the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming. Rife with references to Bach’s compositional style, the excerpt provides an intricate and rousing conclusion to the concert.