They were formed in 1991 by conductor and musical director Craig Hella Johnson as New Texas Festival but did not begin to regularly perform until 1999.
Their sixth Grammy-nominated album, The Sacred Spirit of Russia (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807526), was the winner of the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.
Conspirare has commissioned works from composers including David Lang, Tarik O'Regan, Jocelyn Hagen, Donald Grantham, Eric Whitacre, Nico Muhly, Mark Adamo, Robert Kyr, Jake Heggie, Eric Banks, and Jake Runestad.
Robert Faires of The Austin Chronicle described the album's qualities as "sensitivity to text, purity of vocal tone, and, of course, those long, lush harmonies, with voices melding seamlessly into sounds that are achingly lovely".
[14] The album has a "somber theme of death and loss", with Requiem Masses by Herbert Howells and Ildebrando Pizzetti and a memorial for tsunami victims by Eliza Gilkyson.
[18] The tracks are based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe,[17] Pablo Neruda,[19] Kathleen Raine[18] and Emily Dickinson.
[22] Their fourth recording, A Company of Voices - Conspirare in Concert, was released on May 12, 2009 by Harmonia Mundi on both CD (HMU 907534) and DVD.
The CD included the premiere recordings of arrangements by David Lang and Tarik O'Regan plus original compositions by Robert Kyr and Kirby Shaw.
Big Love is the first focus track from Best Choral Performance Grammy Winner (2014) Conspriare's Contemporary Choral release featuring singer-songwriter Carrie Rodriguez (Americana Chart topper who has performed on Austin City Limits, The Tonight Show, A Prairie Home Companion and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Times of London, the New Yorker, the Washington Post).