CONSPIRARE RECEIVES TWELFTH GRAMMY® NOMINATION FOR ADVENA: LITURGIES FOR A BROKEN WORLD
Contact: Ann McNair
Conspirare Managing Director
512-740-6932
amcnair@conspirare.org
David Weuste
First Inversion CEO
682-233-4978
david@first-inversion.com
AUSTIN, Texas (November 7, 2025) Austin-based Conspirare, conducted by Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson, was nominated for Best Choral Performance GRAMMY® for advena: liturgies for a broken world on the Divine Art Records label. The GRAMMY® awards ceremony will take place on February 1, 2026 in Los Angeles.
Conspirare Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson reflected on the nomination’s importance, saying:
“The level of artistry happening right now in our international choral community is off-the-charts extraordinary, so for Conspirare’s offering to be highlighted as a part of this distinctive group of five ensembles is just so incredibly special.
I am so proud of the community of artists and collaborators who invested so deeply in advena‘s creation. We continue to hear from so many about the profound impact of the music and text on this release, and I hope this nomination serves to amplify tis message of our shared humanity and the urgent need for bold truth-telling.”
This is the 12th nomination for Conspirare’s recordings. Conspirare was awarded the GRAMMY® Award for Best Choral Performance for The Sacred Sprit of Russia in 2015. Previous nominations include House of Belonging (Best Choral Performance), The Singing Guitar (Best Choral Performance) The Hope of Loving (Best Choral Performance), Considering Matthew Shepard (Best Surround Sound), Pablo Neruda – The Poet Sings, (Best Choral Performance), Requiem (Best Choral Performance and Best-Engineered Album, classical), A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert (Best Classical Crossover Album) and Threshold of Night (Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance).
Critical Acclaim:
“Conspirare carries this appealing interpretation above all with their exquisitely balanced sound, which brings the necessary emotionality and intimacy to the works. ” – Guy Engels, Pizzicato
“So much darkness might prompt a listener to shy away from the panoply of lamentations and sadness but Buller is a composer who knows how to imbue feelings with ample warmth, colour and tension that keep the ear immersed in his sonic worlds. The musical language is largely tonal, with some roots in sacred choral traditions, yet with sufficient harmonic pungency to provide underpinnings of meaning to Leah Lax’s empathetic, urgent texts in the two extended works.” – Gramophone
HEAR CONSPIRARE LIVE:
Conspirare’s next live performance is Conspirare Christmas: House of Love guest artist Carrie Rodriguez on December 6, 7, and 8 in Austin and Houston
ABOUT THE ALBUM:
View EPK: advena: liturgies for a broken world EPK
Born of personal reckonings with inherited faith and culture, Mass in Exile and Requiem for the Light are liturgies shaped by the world of today. Composed by Mark Buller with librettist Leah Lax, these works reimagine these ancient forms with the immediacy our present moment demands.
These works are presented between two companion works — Introit: Fruit of Your Heart and Communion: A Questioning — with texts by British poet and librettist Euan Tait which offer chantlike settings that extend the project’s core themes, anchoring the whole in a wider human arc .
Conspirare continues its ongoing commitment to commissioning and performing music of today’s most vibrant living composers with this release. advena: liturgies for a broken world is a powerful vehicle for a global audience to embrace music as a conduit for reflecting on the global pain of migration, displacement, and cultural fracture, our growing sense of alienation from ourselves, from one another, and from the natural world.
advena: liturgies for a broken world
Divine Art: DDX 21143
Works:
Introit: Fruit of Your Heart (Libretto Euan Tait)
Mass in Exile (Libretto Leah Lax)
Requiem in the Light (Libretto Leah Lax)
Communion: A Questioning (Libretto Euan Tait)
Composer: Mark Buller
Conspirare
Craig Hella Johnson, Artistic Director & Conductor
SOPRANO
Lillian Boessen – San Marcos, TX
Gitanjali Mathur – Austin, TX
Savannah Porter – Brooklyn, NY
Kathlene Ritch – Santa Fe, NM
Tiana Sorenson – Chicago, IL
Emily Yocum Black – Paducah, KY
ALTO
Zerrin Agabigum Martin – Gainesville, FL
Ana Baida – Atlanta, GA
Sarah Brauer – Eugene, OR
Lauren McAllister – Cincinnati, OH
Laura Mercado-Wright – Austin, TX
TENOR
Michael Jones – Los Angeles, CA
Haitham Haidar – Montreal, CA
David Kurtenbach Rivera – San Francisco, CA
Wilson Nichols – New York, NY
BASS
Simon Barrad – San Francisco, CA
Michael Hawes – Pflugerville, TX
Robert Harlan – Austin, TX
Enrico Lagasca – New York, NY
John Proft – Austin, TX
INSTRUMENTALISTS
Patrice Calixte, Violin – Montreal, Quebec
Mariama Alcântara, Violin – Austin, TX
Bruce Williams, Viola – Austin, TX
Douglas Harvey, Cello – Austin, TX
Jessica Valls, Bass – Austin, TX
Marc Garvin, Guitar – Houston, TX
Thomas Burritt, Percussion – Leander, TX
Austin Haller, Rehearsal Pianist – Austin, TX
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Craig Hella Johnson, Conspirare Artistic Director & Conductor
Craig Hella Johnson is the founding artistic director and conductor of Conspirare. Beloved for crafting thought-provoking musical journeys that create deep connections between performers and listeners, Hella Johnson is also Artistic Partner at the Oregon Bach Festival. Hella Johnson is a celebrated guest conductor of choral and orchestral works, a published composer, arranger, and educator. Hella Johnson is an Artist in Residence at Texas State University, earning the 2022 Presidential Award for Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activities. Hella Johnson’s concert-length composition Considering Matthew Shepard was premiered and recorded by Conspirare and continues to have broad national and international reach. Hella Johnson’s accomplishments have been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Notably among them, he and Conspirare won a 2015 GRAMMY® for Best Choral Performance. His honors also include Chorus America’s Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art, Texas State Musician, the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s Dennis Dougherty Award for Community Leadership and most recently, Wartburg College’s 2023 Graven Award.
Mark Buller, Composer
Composer Mark Buller, a composer based in Houston, writes music which seeks to blend rich lyricism with bold gestures and striking rhythms. His music has been heard in venues around the world, from Carnegie Hall and the Moscow Conservatory to offbeat locations such as the Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney and MOVIMENTO in Munich. His orchestral works have been performed by leading orchestras and conductors, and his music for vocal and choral forces has been presented around the world. He has been privileged to write for world-class ensembles and organizations, including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Chamber Choir, ROCO (River Oaks Chamber Orchestra), and Apollo Chamber Players. His flexibility as a composer has led to some unique projects and commissions: four operas for Houston Grand Opera with libretti by Charles Anthony Silvestri and Euan Tait (together totaling over 180 performances since 2015); a series of poignant art songs and a major choral work also for HGO, setting words by veterans and by Leah Lax; and eighty short pieces for various forces, entitled Quarantine Miniatures, written during the COVID-19 lockdown. Originally from Maryland, Mark studied as a pianist before earning his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Houston, where he studied with Marcus Maroney and Rob Smith. Former teachers also include Dan Forrest and Joan Pinkston. He currently teaches at Houston Community College and runs the precollege composition program at AFA. Mark is a Hermitage Artist Fellow and an AIR Serenbe Seikilos Focus Fellow.
Leah Lax, Librettist
Librettist Leah Lax is an author and librettist who often combines the roles. She likes to use oral histories, which were the basis of her Houston Grand Opera oratorio, The Refuge, by Christopher Theofanidis, about immigrants and refugees and their journeys to this country. Years later, she wrote a book, Not From Here: the Song of America, about creating that opera and discovering the world (Pegasus, 2024). Leah says her memoir, Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home, the first gay memoir ever to come out of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox world, has taken her on quite a journey. She wrote the libretto for an opera based on Uncovered at the request of composer Lori Laitman, (City Lyric Opera/NY, 2023). Working once again with Houston Grand Opera, Leah joined composer Mark Buller to write Overboard based on testimonies of survivors of the USS Houston, downed in WWII. Overboard has been performed many times. Leah continued to work with Buller and together created Mass In Exile, a deeply personal struggle toward a new kind of faith in a broken world, reclaiming a classic form of the faithful – Leah and Buller see themselves as exiles from fundamentalism. At the behest of Conspirare, Leah reached again to classic form to write Requiem In the Light with Buller, expressing the daily effort to make our brief lives meaningful in, again, a broken world.
Euan Tait, Librettist
Euan Tait is a European of Scots-Welsh heritage, born in a still partly war-shattered Berlin in 1968. He is a librettist whose work is performed and commissioned across the world, as well as a retreat leader. He is a teacher for 14-18 year olds and adults, many of whom are settling in the UK for the first time. He delights in the great mountains, wildlife and rivers near his Gwent home in south east Wales. More information at https://euantait.com.
Conspirare
Conspirare is a professional choral organization under the leadership of Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson. Inspired by the power of music to change lives, this ensemble engages singers from around the world who join voices to deliver world-class, extraordinary live musical experiences and recordings. Their discography includes 16 commercial albums and 20 self-produced live albums. Hella Johnson and Conspirare were awarded a 2015 GRAMMY® for Best Choral Performance for The Sacred Spirit of Russia and their recordings have received 12 total nominations. Conspirare has performed throughout the United States and internationally. At home, Conspirare performs a full annual season in Austin where it has received ongoing recognition from local organizations and critics. Conspirare has been the subject of PBS documentaries and was awarded a Texas Medal of Arts and garnered international recognition including the Dutch Edison Award. The group is also committed to lifelong singing through the Symphonic Choir, Conspirare Artist Citizen Choral Collective, and Big Sings.
About Divine Art Records
Founded in 1992 in Northumberland by Stephen Sutton, the award-winning and critically acclaimed label is now the flagship within the family of recording labels now owned by First Inversion. Divine Art’s commitment to quality, introducing new music and artists, and fascinating rarities has made it the destination for the distinguished listener for over thirty years.
