This text begins Craig Hella Johnson’s watershed work, Considering Matthew Shepard. It’s an transformative exhortation to embrace love, to release fear, to forgive.

Twenty-five years ago, on the night of October 6, 1998, a 21-year-old gay man, Matthew Shepard, was tied to a fence, savagely beaten, and left to die. Composer Craig Hella Johnson takes us on a deeply meaningful and transformative journey, telling Matt’s story with text drawn from news coverage, his mother and father, and his own journal.

Join the Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte and the Women’s Chorus of Charlotte as we combine to present Considering Matthew Shepard. It’s a story that’s both beautiful and hard to hear, but truly inspiring. If we listen and are open, we have the opportunity to shift our perspectives and open our hearts.