“That first or second week, I thought, ‘I’m not gonna make it. This is my last semester here, and I’m not coming back,’” she recalled.

But then, she said, she began forming deep connections with her professors.

“Going to school with students nearly half my age, I felt a little more connected with my professors than with my fellow students,” she said. “When I started making those connections, I had this feeling that I was going to be OK after all.”

She had met her advisor, English Professor Dr. Kevin Seidel, during an open house the previous fall. “He checked in one day to make sure I was doing all right,” Beachy said. “We talked about how my experience was going, and that was super helpful.”

Beachy graduated with degrees in English and writing studies last spring after five semesters at EMU. She had transferred to the university from online classes at Blue Ridge Community College. By the time she enrolled at EMU, she had already spent four years teaching at the church school she graduated from and another 10 years developing curriculum at in Harrisonburg.

When Beachy, who lives in Staunton, expressed interest in pursuing a bachelor’s degree, a co-worker at Christian Light recommended EMU. He thought the close-knit community would be a good fit for her, and he was right.

“The fact that EMU is small makes it more personable,” she said. “I feel like you get to know your professors better. I didn’t know that when I started, but I’ve enjoyed that.”

She mentioned Dr. Marti Eads and Chad Gusler as faculty members she’s grown close to. “I appreciate the connections I made here, and I feel that some of my professors are still my friends,” she said. “They’re people I connect with when I see them, which is really useful.”

Beachy worked part-time at Christian Light while taking classes as a full-time student and tried to find courses that fit her busy schedule. When the registrar suggested she take a sociology class, she enrolled in Dr. Gaurav Pathania’s class.

She described the sociology professor as “very personable” and fondly recalled that he served chai and cookies in class. “That was something I always enjoyed,” Beachy said. “We would have discussions outside of class, too, and it was interesting to hear his perspectives on life in India versus life here.” She enjoyed his introductory sociology class so much that she signed up for more classes with Pathania. Those sociology classes helped her think about the world differently and better understand social issues.

Pathania remembers Beachy as never missing a class and demonstrating a level of thoughtfulness and maturity that set her apart. “Joyce is truly one of the most exceptional students I have encountered in my five years of teaching at EMU,” he wrote.

Through a “Local Context” intercultural program, Beachy spent a summer studying various neighborhoods and social groups in Harrisonburg. That experience led her to try different ethnic restaurants in the area. “I still enjoy doing that to this day,” she said.

Last spring, Beachy served as an editorial intern for EMU’s marketing and communications department, writing many well-received articles for EMU News. She attended the 2025 Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship Conference and wrote a recap about it. Her story about the intercultural to Guatemala and Mexico was one of the most read stories of 2025. She also wrote about an initiative by the Latinx Student Alliance to distribute “Know Your Rights” cards to members of Harrisonburg’s immigrant community. At the same time, she volunteered to help adult English learners at EMU’s Intensive English Program, which was at the heart of another article written by her.

Near the end of her time at EMU, Beachy was promoted to the role of literacy coordinator at Christian Light Publications. She said her employer is helping reimburse her for tuition costs.

“In the (conservative Mennonite) setting where I come from, it’s not as common for people to pursue higher education,” she said. “They didn’t have any program in place to help with tuition costs, but now they want to offer it to others who want to go to college, which I’m really excited about. It means some reimbursement for me, but it also opens a path for other people.”

Beachy said there are advantages to attending college as a nontraditional, older student. She met students who knew what they wanted to do and were serious about studying, as well as others who were in college because their parents wanted them there. “They didn’t know what they were doing,” she said. “I always felt sorry for them and wished they could just go out and work for a couple years and figure out what they actually wanted to do.”

She mentioned reading The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald that was turned into a Brad Pitt movie a couple decades ago.

“It’s about a guy who’s born an old man, and he goes through life backwards,” she said. “I’ve thought about that story sometimes with my experience at EMU. I felt like I was doing things backwards. Most people go to school and then start their careers. I did my career first, then went to school. But I’m really glad I did it. Now, if I have friends in their 30s who say, ‘Oh, I want to go to college,’ I tell them, ‘Yeah, you should. It’s absolutely worth it.’”

The novel is about a pastor and wife who are dealing with family issues, Davis said. It carries a clear faith message.

Copies of the novel will be on sale at the event for $10. Her other books will also be available to purchase for $2 or $3.

About the author

Davis was a dedicated Weather Vane staffer while at EMU and graduated with an English degree. She worked for Mennonite Broadcasts Inc., now known as MennoMedia, in Harrisonburg for 43 years before retiring in 2018. She has written 12 books, mostly nonfiction. When her daughter challenged her to “write what people like to read: fiction,” she endeavored to write her first novel. A Place in the Fold released in November 2025.

She is the recipient of EMU’s 2005 Distinguished Service Award.

It’s no secret that print newspapers are an endangered species.

Cities as large as and are without printed daily newspapers, as media companies shift to digital, reduce their print schedule, or close entirely.

For colleges and universities, it’s more of the same. In the past four years, the state flagship universities of , , and have shifted their student newspapers from print to online-only editions.

At EMU, the ink and newsprint are still very much alive. Every two weeks during the school year, a dynamic team of writers, editors, designers, and photographers works to put together and publish . The student-run print newspaper, which averages 12 pages of stories and color photos per issue, captures the buzz on campus through reporting and perspectives on campus policies, cultural trends, and national politics.

The half-broadsheet (a term referring to the paper’s physical size) prints 14 issues each academic year and is in its 72nd volume. Read about the history of EMU’s student newspaper, from its first issue as the mimeographed “Purple Press” in 1939 to its merger with The Journal in 1956, in this EMU News article from 2016. 

A paper of record

This semester, juniors Caleb Metzler and Alex Belisle serve as the paper’s co-editors-in-chief. They lead a mix of work-study, practicum, and volunteer student staffers.

It’s a new experience for Belisle. The biology and political science major from Newport News, Virginia, is in his first semester in the post. He’s recently been reading articles from old Weather Vane issues and says it’s exciting to think about how their stories might be viewed years into the future.

“It gives a view into what students from a certain time were thinking and what the attitudes were from that time,” said Belisle. “I think we underestimate how much norms can change.”

For example, he said, one article he read in an archived issue of The Weather Vane quoted a student predicting that the United States would elect a Black president before electing a Catholic one.

“There’s definitely going to be a story in this issue or the next one that isn’t super interesting to us,” he said, “but in four years it’ll be like, Oh, why were they thinking that at the time? That’s so weird.”

For Metzler, the role is a familiar one. The York, Pennsylvania, native, who is majoring in political science, sociology, and Spanish, is in his third semester leading the paper. He joined as a staff writer during his first year at EMU, where he “wrote a lot of stories and learned a lot of lessons,” he said.

“You have to be a team player,” said Metzler, sharing one of those lessons. “If you don’t do your work, everybody else is going to be scrambling to pick up after you, and that’s not fun.”

Metzler said they’ve been free to express their opinions without fear of censorship from the administration. “Shannon,” he said, referring to Interim President Rev. Dr. Shannon W. Dycus, “has been very supportive of what we do.”

Sitara Hackney, managing editor for The Weather Vane, agreed. “We try and encourage people to express themselves as they want,” said Hackney, a junior history and education major in her sixth semester with the paper. “As copy editors, part of our job is changing what people write, but it’s still their names getting printed with their articles.”

From plan to print

It’s just past 5:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in January when Metzler and Belisle call the production night meeting, their first of the spring 2026 semester, to order. They stand in front of a whiteboard in the basement lounge of Maplewood Residence Hall, dry erase markers in hand.

“What is everybody interested in writing about?” Metzler asks the group of 10 students.

Staff Writer Samuel Castaneda calls out an idea for an : “Having an 8 a.m. virtual class on a snow day is not something that should happen.”

Another student pitches a on the hazing training required for all EMU employees. “Maybe there’s a story there,” ponders Metzler. “What’s EMU’s history with hazing?”

After his older brother, Campus Life Editor and Micah Wenger, suggests getting tickets to see a one-woman show, Sell Me: I am from North Korea, at James Madison University’s Forbes Center for the Performing Arts, first-year student and Opinion Editor Reuben Wenger agrees to for the paper.

There’s almost always space in the paper for the word search, sudoku, and maze puzzles contributed by Copy Editor Ethan Kanagy. It’s typically among the most popular sections of The Weather Vane, says Belisle.

“I’ve seen people in the caf doing the puzzles,” he says.

“We hear complaints when there aren’t any puzzles,” Metzler chimes in.

After collecting story ideas for the issue coming out in two weeks, the co-editors-in-chief lead their team of staffers into the Weather Vane newsroom to put together the next day’s paper. Fueled by camaraderie and slices of Marco’s Pizza, the students work through the night editing and designing pages until the paper is put to bed (meaning it’s finished and ready to print). On Thursday morning, the newspaper will be printed at a site about 40 minutes away and delivered to campus later that afternoon.

Despite the pitches they hear at the planning meeting, one unexpected event ends up dominating the front page. Four nights later, a burst of extremely cold weather causes a inside one of the residence halls. It isn’t until 2 a.m. that the issue finally comes together.

For more information about The Weather Vane, contact faculty advisor Mary Ann Zehr at maryann.zehr@emu.edu or the student editors at wvane@emu.edu.

“Everyone’s driving around with the biggest gun they can find, mowing down anyone who seems remotely threatening,” she said. “Everyone’s fighting tooth and nail in this really brutal way.”

Speaking at a Writers Read event in Martin Chapel on Thursday evening, Benner Dixon said she’s not particularly interested in those types of stories. She would rather learn how people get past that point. 

“I don’t want post-apocalyptic,” she said. “I want what comes after. I want to see the communities that thrive once all the warring and stabbing has burned itself out.”

The Height of Land is set in the far distant future and follows Red, a sensitive and inquisitive young farmer who is torn between “spiritual longing and commitment to his community’s survival in a harsh landscape” (). Benner Dixon read from a chapter in her novel, shared a short story she had written about encountering God in her garden, and read an essay that will be published by The Iowa Review in its spring issue.

Answering questions from moderator Dr. Kevin Seidel, professor of English at EMU, and members of the audience, Benner Dixon spoke about beauty in art and gardening, the meaning behind the title of her novel—the dividing line that separates watersheds—and the inspiration that sparked it all. She said she had read a book by religious scholar Reza Aslan, who wrote God: A Human History.

“I started wondering, what would it be like if modern humanity was able to have the slate wiped clean, as it were, of all the religious knowledge we have and create a new religion,” she said. “What would we create?”

Future events

A book launch and “post-post-apocalyptic party” held on Saturday, March 22, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Tangly Woods Farmstead (2715 Fruit Farm Lane, Keezletown, Virginia) will feature a reading from Benner Dixon, an open mic, and demonstrations from local artisans and craftspeople. Read more details about that .

The next Writers Read event, on Tuesday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m. in Martin Chapel, will feature EMU English Professor Kirsten Beachy introducing her memoir of collected essays, Martyrs and Chickens, Confessions of a Granola Mennonite.

About the author

is a teacher, poet, editor, and novelist living in Pittsburgh. She spent roughly 15 years in academia as a classroom teacher and scholar before launching her freelance editing and writing business. Along with poet Sharon Fagan McDermott, she is the co-author of Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as Literary Hub, Reckoning, Flash Fiction, Online, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere.

For Mennonite-raised Nightbitch author Rachel Yoder, what excites her most about speaking at EMU is learning how Mennonites will react to her book. “Will they be offended? Will they relate? Will they see it as productive or worthless?” — all questions she’s pondered in an email to EMU News.

“Now that I’m more outside the Mennonite tradition than in, it feels important to me to remain in conversation with the community regardless, not only as a means to understand the tradition better, but as a means to understand my own story, why I make art, why I have to write things that are ‘dark’ or ‘evil’ or ‘unpleasant,’” said Yoder, who will present at EMU’s Writers Read Author Series on Friday, Feb. 28.

Yoder grew up in a Mennonite community in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Ohio before studying English literature as an undergraduate student at Georgetown University. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona. Currently, she serves as assistant professor of screenwriting and cinema arts at the University of Iowa. 

Her debut novel Nightbitch, published in 2021, is a “strange and unforgettable story about a sleep-deprived stay-at-home mother who, after apparently growing extra nipples, sharper canine teeth and a tail, develops an ‘exhilarating and magical’ ability to literally become a powerful bitch. ()

“It became a cult hit, was named one of the best books of the year by Esquire, got shortlisted for a PEN/Hemingway award — and has now been made into a film starring Amy Adams and directed by Marielle Heller.”

EMU Professor Kevin Seidel said the Language and Literature Department tends to invite authors for its Writers Read series who have some connection to the Mennonite tradition or who can “help us see past the edges of that tradition.” Yoder, he said, meets both of those conditions.

Seidel credited fellow EMU English Professor Kirsten Beachy with introducing him to Nightbitch a couple years ago. 

“She handed me the book with a smile that, looking back, probably meant I dare you to read this,” he recalled. “The first paragraph was so brilliant, so affectionately self-deprecating, and so off-kilter funny that I had to read the rest.” 

An evening of powerful poetry performed by jessica Care moore and Brad Walrond will kick off EMU’s Writers Read Author series this month.

Verses & Vibes, an event featuring the pair of poets, authors and recording artists, will begin at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 23, at the Common Grounds space in EMU’s University Commons. The event is free to attend and open to the public.

Following their poetry performances, moore and Walrond will lead a Q&A session and participate in a book signing (copies of their books will be available to purchase).

(who stylizes her first and last names in lowercase) is an internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist and producer. She is the founder of book publishing company , founder and producer of , and founder of The Moore Art House, a nonprofit dedicated to improving literacy in Detroit.

In April she was the poet laureate of Detroit. She is the third poet laureate to serve the city since 1981.

moore has performed on stages all over the world, including the Apollo Theater, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the London Institute for Contemporary Arts. She, along with Walrond, will perform at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University this month.

She is the author of The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses the Ghetto, and Sunlight Through Bullet Holes. The poems in her latest collection, We Want Our Bodies Back, speak to “Black women’s creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race” (, 2020).

moore is a two-time Knight Arts recipient, 2018 Joyce Award winner, 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow, 2013 Alain Locke Award recipient, and the 2015 NAACP Great Expectations Award recipient.

is a poet, author, conceptual/performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. His poems have been published in The Atlantic, African Voices Magazine, Moko Magazine, ArtsEverywhere, Eleven Eleven, and Wordpeace. His latest collection of poems, Every Where Alien, “traces blackness, queerness, and desire through the legacy of 1990s and early 2000s New York City underground art movements, illuminating how their roots and undertold histories inspire today’s culture” (, 2024).

Copies of moore’s and Walrond’s are available to check out at EMU’s Sadie Hartzler Library.

The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion partnered with Writers Read, the Office of Student Life, and the Center for Interfaith Engagement to bring this event to life. 

Dawn Neil, coordinator for the Office of DEI, said she had seen moore perform her poetry at the White Privilege Conference in Tulsa this past April.

“Listening to her, the raw power and emotion in her voice gave me chills,” Neil said. “Bringing her here feels essential. Her message needs to be heard, and I believe it’s one that our students will deeply connect with.”

New York Times-bestselling author Douglas Abrams, who has worked with many of the most inspiring people on the planet — from Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama to Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall — is the keynote speaker for EMU’s Academic & Creative Excellence (ACE) Festival.

Abrams will deliver a virtual address titled “Two Truths and Three Lies About Hope and Humanity” from 10:10 to 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 17, in Lehman Auditorium. His address explores the importance of hope in our lives and how to cultivate it personally and collectively when we need it most. It invites audiences to see hope not as a passive or weak response, but as an act of resistance that challenges the status quo. Following his address, Abrams will remain available for a talkback session until 11:30 a.m.

The talk will draw on his work writing The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times (2021) with Goodall (EMU’s Common Read selection for 2023-2024) as well as his collaborations with leading spiritual teachers, activists and scientists. Together with the Dalai Lama and Tutu, Abrams co-wrote The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (2016), which inspired the documentary .

Abrams lives in Santa Cruz, California. He is the founder of Idea Architects, a literary agency and media development company that helps visionaries create a wiser, healthier and more just world.

He worked with Tutu as his co-writer and editor for more than a decade. He was a senior editor at HarperCollins Publishers and served for nine years as the religion editor at the University of California Press.

About the ACE Festival

The ACE Festival invites keynote speakers to engage the community in conversations around values important to us at EMU. The speaker is typically selected with the themes of the year’s Common Read in mind. We invite engagement and response from diverse perspectives, and encourage continued conversation around these themes.

This event is co-sponsored by EMU Convocation and the Language and Literature Program. It will be livestreamed on Facebook Live from the .

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, author of My Monticello (2021), will read from her collection of short stories and field questions at EMU’s Writers Read program on Tuesday, March 19. 

A finalist for the prestigious Kirkus Prize for Fiction, My Monticello appeared on many “Best of” lists, including The New York Times’ “” and Time’s “.” One of its short stories, “Control Negro,” was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Roxane Gay and read live by LeVar Burton. 

Its title story, “My Monticello,” is set in an apocalyptic near-future Charlottesville, Virginia, which is overrun by a white, racist militia. Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, leads her neighbors to take refuge in the historic, abandoned plantation house of her ancestors. 

In a for The Washington Post, Anissa Gray writes that My Monticello “is, quite simply, an extraordinary debut from a gifted writer with an unflinching view of history and what may come of it.” Johnson, an alumna of James Madison University, worked as a public school art teacher for 20 years. She lives in Charlottesville as a full-time writer.

The next morning, Johnson will speak at Convocation on Wednesday, March 20, at 10:10 a.m. at Common Grounds Coffeehouse. A book signing will follow both events, which are free and open to the public.

The events are presented by EMU Language and Literature with the EMU Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Clayton Koppes, professor emeritus of Oberlin College, will present on “Sex, Drugs and Human Rights: The Contested History of HIV/AIDS in the U.S.” for the annual Keim Lecture Thursday, Jan. 26, from 5-6 p.m. in Suter Science Center 106. 

The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception at 4:30 will precede the lecture. View the livestream on Facebook Live from (You do not need a Facebook account to access Facebook Live, nor does clicking on the link obligate you in any way to Facebook.) 

Koppes is the former dean, provost and twice acting president of Oberlin College. He is a historian of American culture, technology, foreign policy and the environment. The author of numerous articles and two books, including the co-authored Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (University of California Press, 1990), he is now writing a history of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. 

Koppes graduated from Bethel College, then earned an MA from Emory University and a PhD with honors from the University of Kansas, both in history. At Bethel, he was a student of Professor Keith Sprunger , father of EMU history professor and Keim Lecture committee member Mary Sprunger. 

“Professor Koppes will provide insights about an important era in U.S. history,” Sprunger said. “Today’s students should know how the stigmatization of AIDS, due to the initial spread of the new disease among the gay community, hampered effective and compassionate public health and religious response to the epidemic. I’m excited–but also disheartened–about the way that this topic connects to current events, such as the covid pandemic, monkey pox, and the Club Q shooting.”

Koppes earned Bethel’s from his alma mater in 2018. The award acknowledges character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity.

Among other professional leadership roles, Koppes has served as president of the American Society for Environmental History and was a founding member of Oberlin’s innovative Environmental Studies program.

More on the Keim Lecture Series

The Albert N. Keim Lecture Series honors the memory of Professor Albert N. Keim who served as a history professor at EMU for 35 years and was the academic dean from 1977 to 1984. The inaugural lecture in 2013 featured leading historian Peter N. Stearns, of George Mason University.

Learn more about past presenters, in this sampling:

2022: Professor Kimberly Schmidt presented on “Marketing Mennonites, Posing Cheyennes: Photography, Gender, and Indigenous Agency on the Mission Field (1880-1920).”

2021:  Historian, author, and investigative reporter Rick Shenkman, founder of History News Network, spoke on “Why is Democracy so @#$&! Hard?” 

2020: Professor Ernesto Verdeja, of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame, was the speaker. 

2019: Federal public defender, immigrant rights attorney and playwright Kara Hartzler ’94 spoke on “Borders, Jails, and Long Drives in the Desert: 25 Years of Immigration Law in the Southwest.”

2017: Dongping Han, professor at Warren-Wilson College and a native of rural China, addressed “The Cultural Revolution: A Reinterpretation from Today’s China.”

2016: Artist/activist provided a lecture titled “Performing Statistics: Connecting incarcerated youth, artists, and leading policy experts to challenge Virginia’s juvenile justice system.”

2015: , political scientist in the University of Kansas’s School of Public Affairs and Administration, presented “The Police and Racial Discrimination in America.”

2014: , a pastor, activist and history professor who helped EMC professors initiate social change in Harrisonburg during the early 1960s, presented “Is America Possible?”

Poet and two-time  bestselling author ‘s first book of poetry, What Kind of Woman, published in 2020, was met with critical acclaim and quickly catapulted her writing career. Since then, Baer — an ��ݮ���� graduate, whose work can also be found in  and , among others — has published a second collection, , with her third title, , debuting Nov. 8. Her body of work largely focuses on  and  in a world disturbed by COVID — and she has garnered media attention for it, too, from sources like  and .

Christine Benner Dixon ‘04 was recently awarded the for her first novel “The Height of Land.”

Dixon, who writes under the pen name , won $1,500 and publication by Orison Books. The contest was judged by author Tania James.

James praised the manuscript, selected from a pool of anonymously submitted entries, as memorable, “profoundly affecting,” and “a refreshing approach to the post-apocalyptic novel, showing us both the possibilities of collective action and the power of a single dissenting voice.”

James describes the farmer-carpenter protagonist, Red, as “a boy desperately searching for spiritual meaning and connection.” 

“Red is a blend of some of the gentlest men in my life (my father, brothers, and husband) as well as my own intense spiritual yearning that found its answer in poetry,” Dixon said. 

She reflects on her work and the community that nurtured it below:

This novel means so much to me, and to have it recognized by this prize from this press has been deeply moving. The Height of Land was my first major project after taking the enormous gamble of leaving my regular teaching job and allowing myself the chance to explore what it might mean to live my life not just as a teacher of language and literature but as a writer.

Being a writer is not an easy thing. You can labor on a story for years without any guarantee of its making it out into the world. There is a constant stream of rejection, disappointed hopes, and self-doubt. But that is where community comes in: people to tell you that your presence matters, that they are better off for having heard you speak, that there is room in this world for your voice. That’s a gift that we can give to one another, no matter the community. I’m so grateful for the people who have celebrated with me and for those who held me up when I was doubting myself — it’s the kind of joy I wish for everyone, no matter where they are in the process of finding their voice.

Dixon serves as the adult program director for Write Pittsburgh. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in Funicular, The Los Angeles Review, The Hopper, Fusion Fragment, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere. A second book, a co-authored collection of craft-of-writing essays is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press in 2023.

We hope that what you hear and see this evening will move your spirit, buoy your soul, challenge your mind and bring joy to your heart. 

Professor David Berry, introducing the 11/11/22 Gala Concert

EMU’s annual Gala Concert was an evening of multiple delights amidst musical artistry, bringing together Nicolas Flagello’s rarely-performed choral masterwork about the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear Balla Kouyaté, a legend of world music.

Equally thrilling to music lovers of the EMU community were the performances of university musicians in all ensembles, joined by 15 young musicians from the Shenandoah Valley Youth Symphony. 

And especially meaningful for both performers and audience that night was that Dianne Flagello, wife of the late composer, had personally blessed the performance. 

Producer and master of ceremonies Professor David Berry shared with the audience that choir director Professor Benjamin Bergey had invited her to the performance. 

The 2.5-hour concert left many with feelings similar to what Berry had wished.

“Our program’s commitments to community engagement, justice and peacebuilding, and diversity of styles and genres in music was so evident,” said Dean Dan Ott, himself a musician. “I could see in the faces of our student-musicians that they understood deeply, in their bodies and spirits, that the full power of music to bring us together was in force during this performance.”

Sharon Welch, who leads the justice-oriented Social Transformation Fellowship, watched the livestream from Chicago. “Deeply inspiring to see young people performing with such skill and integrity that powerful work … such a clear articulation of the pivotal vision and impact of ��ݮ����,”  she observed.

In a note to Bergey after the concert, Flagello expressed appreciation for the multimedia presentation that accompanied the music, for the choir’s “angelic glorious sound,” and for bass Ricky Goodwin, who “sang with a sensitivity and heartfelt understanding of the role.” And in another synchronicity, she shared that Kouyaté’s performance was an “added pleasure, as my major instrument was the marimba.”

EMU’s music community and student-musicians rose to the challenge of two difficult and technically challenging collaborations in what was a rare opportunity, according to Berry and Bergey.

Flagello’s work has only been performed a few dozen times since its premiere. Preparations began more than a year in advance, with Bergey proposing the masterwork as part of a winning Inclusive Excellence grant from EMU’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. 

“The Passion of MLK was such a powerful work to learn on many levels for our students,” Bergey explained. “Modern oratorio is not often tackled as it is often harmonically more dissonant, which can be a challenge at first. Between the important and pertinent thematic content using MLK’s speeches, as well as liturgical texts and a beautiful composition, our students rose to the challenge that not many university groups have done.”

Kouyaté’s visit was also the result of collaborative efforts with and several other organizations (for a full list of sponsors, see below). 

The initial idea to invite him to perform came from his former colleague Kimberly Souther, now director of EMU’s Preparatory Music Program.

Kouyaté not only performed at the gala but visited school groups to speak about and perform with his balafon.

During their rehearsal, EMU musicians learned folk tunes from Mali alongside Kouyaté “in an improvisatory way through a different learning modality, which was such a stretching and beneficial opportunity,” Bergey said.

Professor Kyle Remnant, director of bands, worked in “out-of-the-box and creative ways with the jazz ensemble on improvisation and learning music by ear in preparation for collaborating with Balla,” Berry added. “That really helped give them the confidence to learn the music by ear in the way that these Malian folk songs would have traditionally been taught, which was an important part of the learning process.”

EMU musicians participating in the concert spoke later of their profound appreciation for such a rich experience. 

Orchestra concertmaster Judith Hoffman is a junior music education major aiming to work with young high school musicians. The gala provided her with inspiration to recreate a similar exciting and supportive environment and context, “one that embodies creativity and connection,” she said. “Being in an ensemble and creating music isn’t simply following the dynamics or articulation on the page. It’s about giving meaning to the music and using the music to reach and connect with others.”

Junior music performance major Luke Haynes said his performance in the gala both stretched him and provoked strong emotions. He performed on the clarinet and organ with the Chamber Orchestra for the MLK piece. “I felt like I was contributing to raising awareness that racial oppression is still among us even 54 years after Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in 1968.” 

Haynes also performed on clarinet with the EMU Wind Ensemble, Jazz Band, and Kouyaté. “Learning some of his music and then soloing with him was so humbling,” he said.

“What I loved about this gala was the collaboration across ensembles,” said sophomore music and peacebuilding major Reah Clymer, a soprano with the University Choir and Chamber Singers. “My favorite part of the night was ending the concert with Balla, the Chamber Singers and the EMU Jazz Band. We were all dancing and moving around, singing harmonies, clapping different rhythms, and enjoying the music together. It was a magical and energizing way to end the concert, and I am really grateful to Balla for sharing his music with us.”

Special thanks to sponsors Nancy Heisey and the J.Wilmer and Velma I. Heisey Grant Fund; EMU’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Any Given Child-Shenandoah Valley; Shenandoah Valley Preparatory Music Program; ; ; and Encore, the alumni organization of EMU’s music program.