The Nov. 15 event at Lehman Auditorium includes a collaborative performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and two pieces composed by new professor , as well as a wide variety of selections from the campus’s musical community. The performance begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free, but a suggested donation of $10 per person benefits the music scholarship fund.

The wind ensemble, with more than 25 student musicians, will open the gala with Jean-Joseph Mouret’s “Suite des Symphonies.” Conductor John Dull appreciates the increased exposure the group will receive, as the gala is their largest audience of the year.

The centerpiece of the concert is the popular Part I of Handel’s “Messiah,” performed by the Chamber Singers, men’s and women’s choirs, with the orchestra. Popularly called the “Christmas” movement, Part I celebrates the birth of Jesus and ends with the rousing “Hallelujah” chorus.

“Every student should have a chance to sing it or play it some time,” says Nafziger, of the Baroque oratorio.

Music professor , the orchestra’s conductor who will play the violin as well, says she enjoys the camaraderie of playing alongside her students. “The collaboration is what I really enjoy,” she says.

instructor Christa Hoover and graduate student Katrina Gehman will also play violin in the gala as soloists in Sarasate’s “Navarra” with the orchestra, a “super effervescent, whirlwind violin duo,” says Hoover.

Both violinists are Wheaton College alumni now teaching with the . Their friendship contributes to the close listening required to harmonize in the duet. Gehman, who has played violin since she was eight, hopes “that the audience in this gala can connect through the music with the parts of themselves that cannot be expressed in words, and yet still long to speak.”

Sharing personal experience and reflective moments are also what rewards Keebaugh when writing music. The chamber choir and string quartet will perform one of his compositions, titled “…Thy light which is brighter than the sun and the moon.” Keebaugh wrote the piece for Winchester’s Musica Viva concert last year in tribute to Jim Harmon, a beloved Virginian singer who died of cancer.

“It was an act of love and sorrow and respect,” said Nafziger, who upon hearing the piece, immediately wanted the chance to conduct it.

“To have that honor to commemorate someone’s life in a piece of music is a wonderful thing,” said Keebaugh. The piece, which revolves around themes of light and dawn, took him eight months to compose.

Junior Sarah Sutter will sing the melody in Keebaugh’s adaptation of “The Lord’s Prayer” with the women’s choir. She appreciates the unique opportunity to work with the composer and learn the inspiration and intent behind the music. In this version of “The Lord’s Prayer,” the choir surrounds the audience while mimicking the echoes of singing in a cave or cathedral. With this format, Keebaugh intends to make the audience part of the ensemble – breaking down the “us versus them” structure of traditional performance to better commune the personal sacred themes he writes into music.

Other musical numbers include Bartok’s “Romanian Folk Dances,” a contemporary orchestra piece, and “Music Down in My Soul,” a spiritual arrangement by Moses Hogan in the chamber singers’ repertoire.

“Even if you think that classical music isn’t your thing, you should come and give it a shot,” says Sutter. “We’re doing things in a whole range of styles and eras, so come and listen before you say you don’t like it!”

For more information, contact the at 540-432-4225.

Some closed their eyes and others gazed at the dog tags hanging from the maple tree at 91����Ƶ. The group was there for Thursday’s closing ceremony of a project known as the “.” Each oblong necklace dangling from the tree’s branches represented a veteran who took his or her own life.

“At first when we hung them up, there weren’t enough to chime,” project co-organizer Katrina Gehman, 25, said of the tags, which were added to the tree daily. “The more it grew throughout the month the more we would hear that music. Hearing the music, it’s like a beautiful representation [of their lives].”

As Gehman’s fellow organizer, Michael McAndrew, 28, says, the tags represent “a lot of people’s stories.”

Each day throughout November, McAndrew and Gehman, both graduate students in , hung 22 tags on the tree. That’s the number of veteran suicides that occurred each day in 2010, according to a study.

By the end of the month, 660 dog tags hung on the 91����Ƶ tree.

“It’s a huge epidemic really [and] we just don’t think that people should be silent about it,” he said.

McAndrew, who served for four years in the Navy, came up with the idea for the project to raise awareness about the isolation, mental strife and other difficulties veterans can have as they try to ease back into civilian life upon returning from service.

He counts himself as “one of the lucky ones” — a member of the military who did not fight depression or face other barriers upon ending his service. McAndrew served in various foreign countries, but never in combat zones.

“I’ve known a lot of people who struggled with depression, PTSD, alcoholism [or] divorce,” he said. “Being [at 91����Ƶ] and making the transition from a military environment to a peacebuilding environment made me want to practice what I was learning.”

Gehman was also interested in the issue, and invited McAndrew to join her in an 91����Ƶ seminar called Journey Home from War. That seminar was specifically about veterans’ transitions back to civilian life. She then joined McAndrew on the project.

“It’s a symbolic way of saying, we as a community are acknowledging what they’ve gone through,” Gehman said. “The physical [and] moral injuries in their spirits; this project was just to make that visible because it’s invisible in a lot of ways in our society today.”

The duo also received help and support from local churches, fellow classmates and a nonprofit organization known as Veterans for Peace.

“I’m really grateful that so many people could come together with us to share their stories and just really honor the dignity of these men and women,” said McAndrew.

Courtesy Daily News Record, Dec. 16, 2013

Two graduate students, Michael McAndrew and Katrina Gehman, began hanging 22 dog tags per day at the beginning of November, marking the average number of U.S. military veterans who commit suicide every 24 hours, culminating in 242 tags hanging on Veterans Day.

“I wanted to open a line of conversation between the world that I was in and the world I’m in now,” said McAndrew, who completed his service with the U.S. Navy earlier in 2013 and began pursuing a at 91����Ƶ this fall.

McAndrew said the idea of covering a tree with dog tags occurred to him after he heard some male students at the 91����Ƶ gym talking about how awesome it would be to be a Navy Seal or to go to a war zone. “I was like, ‘These guys don’t know anything.’ I wanted to do something to show the real cost of war.”

Raised differently from McAndrew, with a pacifist Mennonite family background, Gehman’s knowledge of veterans was acquired through interacting with friends after college who returned from military service and reading about the reintegration of veterans into civilian society. She also conducted interviews with veterans this fall as part of her graduate research at 91����Ƶ’s .

“People who have been hurt and who are suffering within the military community need to be shown compassion and support, values that Mennonites have, ” she said. “I want to bring attention to veterans who don’t feel they are being seen.”

McAndrew and Gehman found common cause in a program in September called the Journey Home From War, a specialized workshop under . It’s designed for veterans and people in their families, communities or congregations looking for ways to support them.

Gehman, who is a classmate of McAndrew’s in CJP, has a strong interest in the invisible wounds, “the moral injury,” borne by many returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – wounds which don’t get as readily acknowledged and treated as do physical wounds.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” said McAndrew. “I wasn’t a combat veteran. I have a wife with whom I have a strong relationship, and the day I got out I immediately integrated into a new community [at 91����Ƶ]. I care about the ones who aren’t as lucky.”

In a gathering at 91����Ƶ’s coffee house on Veterans Day evening, CJP professor spoke up about the disconnect veterans often feel between the constructed meaning of their military service and life apart from that construct. “People have to find meaning in community, meaning within themselves.”

Gehman gave a presentation in the coffee house on the myriad reasons for veterans’ loss of meaning and difficulty reintegrating into civilian life. She stressed the need for communities to play an active role in meeting their needs and supporting their reintegration. In response, an audience member recommended the , consisting of volunteer efforts in communities across the nation in support of veterans, military members and their families.

Veterans Day at 91����Ƶ concluded with about 30 people holding candles in a circle around the tree bearing 242 dog tags, soberly acknowledging the loss of many lives to war and its aftermath.