Singer Jade Espina never knew her maternal grandfather, a paratrooper with the legendary 82nd Airborne who fought in World War 2 and died before the Frost School of Music student was born.
“I’m very honored to be his granddaughter,” said Espina, who is getting a doctorate in vocal performance and pedagogy. “I wish I could have learned what that experience was like for him.”
“Our generation needs to be exposed to this, and one of the best ways to do that is through music.”
Music gave Espina a powerful sense of that experience last week, when she joined 40 Frost School choral singers and 13 alumni to perform the ambitious oratorio “Letters Home,” inspired by letters and writings by soldiers, nurses, and other service members from World War I to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to express the trauma and impact of military service. Composed by Frost School associate professor of practice Shawn Crouch for choir, orchestra, and mezzo-soprano, and conducted by Matthew Brady, the director of choral studies, “Letters Home” premiered at New York’s world-famous Carnegie Hall.
The project has been deeply meaningful for the two men, whose families have a long history of military service. Crouch’s great-grandfather served in WWI, his grandfather commanded a bomber squadron in WWII, and his father was in the reserves. Crouch’s younger brother, Kyle, fought in Iraq, coming home with PTSD that eventually took his life.
“There’s no mechanism to bring you back into society,” said Crouch. “I watched what happened to Kyle after he got out of the military. What I found is people mostly don’t talk about it.”
Brady’s brother, who was in the Army Air Defense Artillery, subsequently died of cancer. Brady followed his grandfather, who fought in World War II, and many others in his family to leave college in 2003 to fight in Iraq for a year. There, he worked in convoy security, facing constant attacks, explosives planted inside dead dogs by the road, and the reality-shifting violence and chaos of war.
“You try to rationalize an atmosphere and situation the rest of the world wouldn’t understand, and that you at that point don’t understand and probably never will,” said Brady, who volunteered in an idealistic response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. “Combat is a different dimension.”
A powerful message
Crouch hopes “Letters Home” conveys the profound impact of an experience held up as essential to society but increasingly remote from most Americans. Less than 1% of the U.S. population currently serves in the military, and only about 6% are veterans.
That the piece premiered shortly after Memorial Day, during a war with Iran, and as the country prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary with America 250, adds weight and relevance to “Letters Home.”
“This is not a political work,” Crouch said. “It’s honoring our veterans and anyone associated with war efforts. But there’s also honesty about how bad things happen and good people find themselves in situations where there’s only one way through, and that’s to survive. It looks at conflict from a holistic place.”
Significantly, the piece was commissioned by MidAmerica Productions (MAP), which presents many of the concerts at Carnegie Hall, often of choral music. The company’s CEO, James Redcay, a history buff whose family’s military service goes back to the Union side of the Civil War, was moved by the theme of “Letters Home” and Crouch and Brady’s connection to the subject.
“We are proud to support this,” said Redcay. “I was drawn to Shawn and his idea for this work because of his sincerity and authenticity. This country has at times had a difficult history of supporting veterans. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to be part of something that sheds light on the humanity of people’s service and the experience of service to a wider audience.”
Aylin Bulan, a 24-year-old Brooklyn native who did a year of active duty at Guantanamo Bay with the Coast Guard right after high school and still serves in the reserves, said people are usually skeptical or uncomprehending of her service. “It truly feels like no one understands my experience in the military or my reasons for joining, that it’s not understandable unless you’ve served,” said Bulan, who went on to get advanced degrees in conflict resolution and diplomacy, and was one of a small group of veterans that MAP invited to “Letters Home.” “When I tell people it’s always like ‘I almost joined’ or ‘my great-grandfather served.’ That’s great, but it doesn’t make me feel like you relate to me any better.”
Michael Matos, who also joined the Coast Guard after high school, in 2013, echoed Bulan. “It’s something you won’t understand unless you go through it yourself,” said Matos, who leads Five Borough Veterans, an advocacy and support group. “Only 24% of veterans in New York say they’re veterans. They hide what they do. When I say I’m a veteran, one of the things people say is ‘oh, how many people did you kill?’”
Crouch and Brady bonded over their shared experience and loss over drinks at Crouch’s home one evening in the fall of 2024. That conversation helped propel Crouch to start “Letters Home” and led Brady to propose the work to MAP after they invited him to conduct at Carnegie Hall.
Crouch dug deep in his research, using Andrew Carroll’s famed book “War Letters” and the archive he heads at Chapman University, and working with Bill Shugarts, a family member and combat veteran who connected him to veterans’ groups whose members shared their own family papers, including WW1 era letters that became part of the libretto. Crouch read the memoirs of Diane Carlson Evans, a Vietnam combat nurse and advocate for female veterans, whose account of that terrible war was the source of the mezzo-soprano soloist passages. Sadly, Evans, who had been corresponding with Crouch and hoped to attend “Letters Home,” died on May 20 of cancer caused by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The piece is dedicated to her and to Shugarts, who died of a heart attack on Christmas Day of 2024.
“There’s a responsibility to be the voice of these folks,” said Crouch. “It’s heavy as a composer to carry this weight.”
“These words are not from some ancient poem. This is what a soldier wrote in their most intimate moments. Many of them are still alive.”
Among them is Stephen Prasser, a chaplain at Dover Air Force Base in 2010, who ministered to the mortuary workers processing fallen soldiers and the families receiving their loved ones in what is called a dignified transfer. Prasser wrote a blog about that experience and what he calls “the immense realization of loss.” A passage describing how he reassured a mother that her son’s body “would be cared for with utmost dignity, honor, and respect” is one of the final texts in “Letters Home.”
“I remember how we connected and how distraught she was at the loss of her son,” said Prasser. “I felt like I could console her and give her peace that her son would not be alone. She hugged me and said, ‘I’ll remember you.’ For this to live on in an artistic form takes that moment and lets it live. It’s like another memorial.”
Coming Together
“This ensemble has to feel like one organism,” Brady says to the 50-plus singers gathered for rehearsal in a fellowship hall in the Church of Sts. Cyril & Methodius and St. Raphael, on the western edge of midtown Manhattan. It’s a relatively standard instruction for a choir, but it takes on another layer of meaning here. He raises his right hand and asks them to repeat with him: “I am a master musician. But with my friends around me, I am unstoppable.”
The understanding Brady brings from his combat experience and the rapport he and Crouch, who sits, following along on a copy of the score, have developed around “Letters Home” illuminate his direction of the four-hour rehearsal. The piece is in three parts: “Preparing for Deployment,” “In Country,” and “Coming Home.” Crouch’s musical inspirations included Benjamin Britten’s monumental anti-war “War Requiem,” the resonant American spirit of Aaron Copland. The music of “Letters Home" ranges from jagged angularity to aching melody, all of it intimately linked to the text.
“Could we get a little more percussive, a little more agitated?” Brady says of “The Wounds You Can’t See,” a section on PTSD, which juxtaposes a mechanical repetition of “I take psychosis medicine” with a soft, slow plea for “patience and understanding.” In “Double Amputee,” which recounts how soldier Sue Downes lost both her legs in an explosion in Afghanistan, he calls the choir’s attention to how her description of falling snow contrasts with the sense of mortality in the lines “her body was cold, she probably won’t make it.”
“You hear that pathos,” Brady said. “In the middle of this violence, you’re noticing the snowfall, how pretty it is. It’s locked into your memory. Then the world changes. Let’s capture that.”
The Frost School students, who range from undergraduate to doctoral level, and the alumni gathered by fellow Frost School alum and MAP COO Eric Spiegel, who also sang in the piece, were inspired by Crouch and Brady’s passion and insight.
“They shared their stories throughout the process, which gave a lot more depth and meaning to what is behind these words,” said Espina.
“Dr. Crouch did a phenomenal job of fitting these melodies to the text, whether excitement or the horrors of what a soldier has to deal with,” said Jacques Yarris, a member of the choir and a just-graduated composition major who studied with the composer. “The letters are so haunting. Combining them with the music affects you so much more.”
Alumna Barret Johnson, B.M. ’11, drove up from her home in Baltimore, where she is a jazz and choral singer, to join the performance. She was drawn by the opportunity to sing in a Frost School project at Carnegie Hall, but mostly by the chance to express feelings around her family’s extensive military service, from her father, his brother, and both grandfathers to several cousins who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. One came back with severe PTSD, making the “Double Amputee” and “Coming Home” sections especially emotional for her.
“It’s a badge of honor,” said Johnson, her eyes welling up. “That’s the mentality you have to take because the fight is not done when you get back. It’s shameful how easily we forget the people who make these sacrifices. Everyone who serves in the military makes some form of sacrifice, even if they’re not wounded.”
As the rehearsal wound down, Brady and Crouch thanked the singers for voicing that sacrifice. “There’s no way that history can carry the power of the human voice, or the meaning that you can put into a text,” said Brady.
“I am grateful and honored to have made this music with you and to collaborate with you and for you to have spent so much time to bring this piece to the world,” said Crouch, as the choir applauded.
Carnegie Hall and Beyond
That sense of mission continued Saturday evening, as the choir gathered with Brady in a small room backstage. “No matter what happens, we are together on this,” he said to the excited, black-clad singers. “You only get one first time at Carnegie Hall. So bring all your artistry to this.”
The legendary venue has a warm glow not just in its sound but also in the soaring, cream-colored, gold-ornamented hall. It amplifies the choir’s unity and emotion, accompanied by the New England Symphonic Ensemble, in “Letters Home,” the poignant prelude, with the choir singing a litany of letter greetings “Dear Mother, Dear Dad”; the piercing dissonance of mezzo-soprano Margaret Gawrysiak in the Vietnam and PTSD passages from Evans’ memoir. The aching melody of the final passage, the heartbreaking poem “Gentle Heroes,” an ode to fallen soldiers by a Vietnam helicopter pilot who died in combat, with a trumpet echoing “Taps,” the traditional bugle song that accompanies a soldier’s funeral.
As moving and momentous as the Carnegie Hall performance was, it was not the final moment for “Letters Home.” Crouch is working to find ways to perform a much longer, full-length version of the piece and hopes it will continue through community and professional choirs. He offered this reflection on what the piece meant to him and what he hopes it will convey to others.
“Letters Home” is the culmination of many threads that have shaped my life as a composer, musician, and family member. At its heart, “Letters Home” is deeply personal. The loss of my brother Kyle, a Marine Corps veteran who struggled with PTSD after serving in Iraq, profoundly influenced the creation of this piece. Through these letters, I sought not only to tell the stories of those who served but also to honor Kyle, Diane, and Bill’s memory and the countless veterans and families whose lives have been forever changed by military service. The work reflects both the visible and invisible wounds of war, while also celebrating the courage, love, and humanity that endure in the face of hardship.”
