Oct. 5, 2009 issue
Reunion Vocal Band reunites
By Jim Bishop Eastern Mennonite UniversityPage:
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HARRISONBURG, Va. — Reunion Vocal Band is having its own reunion at Eastern Mennonite University’s Homecoming and Family Weekend Oct. 9-11.
The group started in 1989 after James Krabill and his wife, Jeanette Neff Krabill, both EMU alumni, had returned stateside after 14 years of mission work in Europe and West Africa.
Krabill, now senior executive of global ministries with Mennonite Mission Network in Elkhart, Ind., had a desire to play music.
While at EMU, Krabill was vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for the folk-rock group Rebirth. They went on two national tours and made several recordings.
In consultation with other former Rebirth members, Krabill contacted about 40 musicians from across North America. Eighteen showed up one weekend in September 1989 in Harrisonburg to share their personal and musical journeys, play spontaneously in small groups and engage in a lengthy jam session.
At a second meeting in Harrisonburg in 1991, participants began plans for a recording and narrowed a list to 14 songs. The weekend included an intense session on what to call the group. From a list of some 150 possibilities came Reunion Vocal Band.
Reunion Vocal Band recorded two albums, Hunger for Beauty in 1991 and What We Have Tasted in 1995. Group members wrote much of the material.
For the next 18 years, band members reassembled annually, usually at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, Mount Pleasant, Pa.
“We’re really an experiment in community,” Krabill said. “Music is what brings us together, but more than that it’s an opportunity to share each others’ stories and to provide a place for new faces to join us.”
The reunion at EMU’s homecoming will be the largest gathering since the musicians’ first meeting in 1989, with 14 original group members and four others.
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