If you want to understand how Craig Hella Johnson works as a composer and arranger, it helps to imagine a radio dial. Along the dial are all these stations, most playing different kinds of music: rock, country, soul, jazz, Latin, classical. You may listen to some music on one station, then turn the dial to another station with a totally different kind of music. Later, you might switch to yet another station for a still different kind of music. Here are so many varied sounds and styles, but they’re all contained within one space where you can bounce among them.
Craig is the radio dial. He is a repository of all kinds of music: the hymns he grew up singing in the Lutheran church where his father was a pastor; the Beethoven sonatas and Bach toccatas and fugues he played while training to be a classical pianist; the sacred choral music he learned at St. Olaf College in Minnesota; the pop, rock, and country hits he heard on turntables, CD players, and radios throughout his life, as well as the spirituals, folk songs, blues, and jazz from this country’s deepest musical traditions. When Craig composes and arranges music, he moves among these diverse forms, setting pieces from different genres side by side such that they seem to belong together.
This “collage” approach has been central to Craig’s work as a composer. He began using it in Conspirare’s Christmas concerts to reinvigorate the tradition of holiday music. Juxtaposing a familiar song of the season with a song not traditionally associated with it – say, the German carol “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” with Bette Midler’s hit “The Rose” – helps erase the lines between the sacred and the secular, between art music and pop music, and it invites listeners to hear what the songs are saying in fresh ways, to hear them converse with each other.
Moreover, the fusion of varied kinds of music increases the likelihood that more people will hear something in a piece that connects with them and brings them deeper into the work. “Where there’s stylistic diversity, there’s an opportunity to have entry points for listeners,” Craig said in an interview with Chorus America. This was especially important to him in writing his original oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard. Blending blues, Gregorian chant, cowboy songs, traditional hymnody, and gospel helped Craig “represent the breadth of the human community, the largest tent possible… For us to really heal and transform, we need to do this together as a ‘we.’”
Craig’s dual roles as conductor and composer – a rare combination in his field and a very special one – feed each other in his music. Along with his rigorous training in classical piano, his study of the great choral scores that Conspirare has performed has given Craig an intimate understanding of the structures and rhythms of classical works, as well as the process of their creation, which he takes as inspiration for his own musical compositions.
Craig has the benefit of having Conspirare at his disposal to help develop his compositions. He considers each of the singers in the Company of Voices to be a soloist in his or her own right, and their collective excellence has been recognized with multiple Grammy nominations for choral performance. This enables Craig to compose music for both the ensemble and the individuals within it. As many singers have been with Conspirare for years – some even decades – Craig can write to their specific voices, and their deep experience interpreting his music makes the collaborative process at once smoother and more productive.
Between the Conspirare singers’ expert artistry and their familiarity with Craig’s work, his compositions receive premieres of the highest quality and recordings that highlight his writings’ beauty and humanity. The worldwide popularity of Craig’s compositions can be traced back to the ensemble he collaborates with so closely. Listeners can hear in Conspirare’s performances the depths of emotion and spirituality that this music can tap. Now, choirs and vocal ensembles across North America, Europe, and Asia have embraced Considering Matthew Shepard, which has been performed hundreds of times since its premiere 10 years ago, as well as “we are,” “Song of Gratitude,” “The Holding Carol,” and many other original works by Craig, plus his singular arrangements of pieces such as “Lo, How a Rose”/”The Rose,” “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” “If I Had a Hammer,” and “I Love You”/”What a Wonderful World.” They’ve heard the conversation in the collage, and it makes sense.
-Robert Faires, September 2026
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