From putting flyers under windshield wipers to winning a Grammy award, Austin-based Choir Conspirare has come a long way since its earliest years.
Conspirare Christmas began at the Carillon Chapel on Exposition Boulevard in 1994. Since then, Conspirare won the 2014 Grammy award for Best Choral Performance and scored Grammy nominations, including a nomination for 2024 Best Choral Performance.
Conspirare Christmas will take place at the Hogg Auditorium this weekend instead of its long-standing Long Center venue. Conspirare’s founding artistic director, Craig Hella Johnson, said Conspirare landed on the Hogg Auditorium because of the location’s renovation and intimate setting. As a former UT faculty member, Johnson said he feels excited to come back.
“(Hogg) is a historic hall and an important place on the University campus,” Johnson said. “It’s fun to come home and be at the center of campus. … So many things and ideas for Conspirare started in a UT place.”
Johnson said that despite the location change, Conspirare Christmas will stay the same.
“We want to keep that same spirit,” Johnson said. “That beautiful sense of coming together during this holiday time, to sing and to feel a sense of shared values and shared belonging with one another.”
Robert Harlan, a founding member of Conspirare and UT alumnus, met Johnson while attending UT and joined Conspirare from there. Harlan said Conspirare Christmas provides a yearly tradition for Austinites.
“We love our Austin audiences,” Harlan said. “We have many faithful listeners who come back year after year and new faithful listeners who joined us as we’ve been going along. It’s always great to sing for the hometown crowd.”
When Gitanjali Mathur moved to Austin in 2002, she joined Conspirare as a soprano. During her first few years there, Mathur said she did not get asked to perform in Conspirare Christmas. When the group finally asked her to join, she said she felt as if she had “made it.”
“What’s unique about Conspirare Christmas … is that it’s a story that Craig creates to tell the audience,” Mathur said. “‘What is it that people need? What are they needing to hear? What are they feeling?’ The program comes from that.”
This year’s featured artist is Lianna Wimberly Williams and the program includes classics “Hark The Herald Angels Sing,” “Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Silent Night,” alongside lively jazz pieces and original arrangements by Johnson.
Harlan said the show consistently offers a welcoming environment for attendees. He said he hopes that if audiences don’t walk away feeling the Christmas spirit, they’ll walk away feeling warm and fuzzy.
“If you don’t feel in the Christmas spirit by the time you get out of there an hour and a half later, well, there’s nothing we can do about that,” Harlan said.
Though performing in Minneapolis, Minnesota next week — the “home of choral singing in America,” as Harlan called it — Johnson said Conspirare feels grateful to partake in keeping the Christmas tradition alive in Austin.
“Conspirare is a musical organization that has been shaped by Austin,” Johnson said. “I’ve been shaped by Austin by the love of music (and) the variety of styles that are present here in our musical landscape in Austin. I love that.”
