Matthew Shepard was a 21 year old student at the University of Wyoming in the city of Laramie in 1998. Several years earlier, Matt had come out as gay to his friends and family and was involved with the LGBTQ+ club in college. On October 6, 1998, he visited a bar where two men offered to give him a ride home but instead, robbed him, beat him, tortured him and tied him to a fence, leaving him to die. Matt died in a hospital six days later. His murder later led to federal hate crime legislation and the men who murdered him are serving life sentences in prison. Matt’s ashes were interned in the crypt at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC in 2018.
In 2016, acclaimed conductor Craig Hella Johnson composed a musical response to the story of Matthew Shepard. Collaborating with the Matthew Shepard foundation, the oratorio, which is a mixture of song and voice, has been performed more than 250 times across the world. The last time it was performed in the Santa Cruz area was at Cabrillo College in March 2020 just as the pandemic began.
