River Campus performance 'very special' for Cape Girardeau native

Liesl Schoenberger rehearsed Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy with the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra Sunday night at Bedell Performance Hall. (Fred Lynch) [Click to enlarge]

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When she was a little girl attending St. Mary's School in Cape Girardeau, Liesl Schoenberger and her classmates went to the grounds of Old St. Vincent's Seminary for play days. She remembers touring the seminary as a Girl Scout. On Tuesday, the already accomplished violinist will return to Cape Girardeau and the transformed seminary grounds for a performance with the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra in Bedell Performance Hall.

Performing at Southeast Missouri State University's new River Campus is only one of the reasons this homecoming performance has an emotional tug for her. Her father, Dr. John Schoenberger, is the other. He is fighting cancer. "It has a lot to do with him in my heart," she said. "There is this sentimental side of me that has a lot attached to this performance. It's very special."

Schoenberger will perform two different pieces. One is the first movement of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, a beautiful and melodic work demanding thoughtfulness from the soloist. The second piece, Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy, is a violinistic tour de force, an opportunity to display all the technical and emotional aspects of playing the instrument. The familiar music from the opera and the violin pyrotechnics should be pleasing to the audience, Schoenberger said.

The symphony also will play Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, an optimistic and lyrical work considered to be in the same league as his New World Symphony.

When symphony conductor Dr. Sara Edgerton arrived at Southeast 16 years ago, Schoenberger was already a local star wowing audiences with both her violin and fiddle playing. While growing up, Schoenberger recorded CDs, performed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn., and won state fiddle championships. Edgerton conducted when Schoenberger played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the symphony at Old St. Vincent's Church her senior year at Notre Dame Regional High School. She is impressed by how much the young woman has grown. "She has gained so many insights and so much maturity in her playing," Edgerton says.

Schoenberger has performed actively since leaving Cape Girar-deau for the University of Indiana, where she is in the Master's of Music program. She has accompanied her teacher, the violinist Mauricio Fuks, to Europe twice for performances and master classes.

In 2006 she and 15 other musicians in the U.S. were invited to a border-crossing workshop at Carnegie Hall with renowned classical bassist Edward Meyer, mandolinist Mike Marshall and banjo player Bela Fleck. More recently, when she comes home for visits, she plays rock 'n' roll sitting in with the Mike Renick Band.

Her latest adventure is a reality TV show called "America's Hot Musician." The show, not yet syndicated, is an attempt to identify the nation's best instrumentalists from various backgrounds. Schoenberger has made it through the first round. She's not sure how she feels about being involved in a reality show but said, "I'm writing it off as an experience, and experiences are always good because you always learn something."

The illness of her father, a private man, is an experience in another dimension of difficulty for her. "Everyone grows up, and it's a different world," she said.

Returning to the seminary grounds seems to buoy her. "I've always had this attachment to this place. That it's finally become this beautiful, incredible thing for this town that is so special to me," Schoenberger said.

"It's something that I have the honor to participate in. I can't tell you how much this means to me."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

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