Last Letter Home

Lee Hoiby’s Last Letter Home is the setting to music of a letter by US Army tank crewman, Jesse Givens, who had been in Iraq for just a month when, on May 1, 2003, his tank crashed and fell into a canal off the Euphrates River. The rest of the crew escaped through a hatch, but Givens perished trapped inside the tank. Hoiby’s intention was to set Givens’ words as clearly as possible, writing it in three-part form for one tenor and two baritone parts.