Cape Girardeau students to join orchestra for Tuesday concert

Junior high school orchestra students like Alex Gentle are accustomed to performing in front of small audiences of parents and grandparents in school auditoriums, not large concert halls.

But the eighth-grade cellist and his classmates in Steve Shaffner's Cape Girardeau Central Junior High orchestra will perform at the Southeast Missouri State University River Campus with the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra.

"I was in awe, because I never thought I would play with such an important orchestra as the Southeast symphony orchestra," Gentle said.

The junior high students will be among 123 Cape Girardeau School District musicians from grades eight through 12 who will be appearing on the Bedell Performance Hall stage Tuesday for a program called "Serenade for Strings." The concert begins at 7:30 p.m.

Gentle said the prospect of playing in front of a large audience on a big stage is exciting.

"I'm getting kind of nervous because it's supposed to be a full auditorium," Gentle said. "It's going to be fun."

River Campus box office spokeswoman Jennifer Karnes said only about 150 of the 900 tickets available for the performance were left as of late Friday morning.

Fellow eighth-grader Noah Smentkowski is also psyched about performing with the not only the Southeast Missouri Symphony but also the Central freshman and high school orchestras.

"I was very excited," said Smentkowski, also a cellist. "I thought it would be a great experience to be able to play with the high school and the symphony from the college. I could not wait for it."

The combined orchestras will be performing Concerto Grosso, a piece written by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

"The composer wrote it for youth orchestras," said Dr. Sara Edgerton, who is artistic director of the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra. "It is written for four orchestras."

Edgerton said she first heard Concerto Grosso years ago and thought it would be a wonderful piece to do with the school students, but the stage at the old Academic Auditorium was too small. With the larger stage at the River Campus available, Edgerton said, "I realized this would be the perfect place to do the combined orchestra."

Shaffner, who has known Edgerton since 1991, embraced the concept immediately.

"I showed the music to Mr. Shaffner," Edgerton said. "He thought it was wonderful."

Shaffner said the idea of having four orchestras on the same stage "sounded like a lot of fun," and thinks the experience for all the public school students will be valuable.

"There's not too many kids anywhere in our country or in any country on the planet earth that get an opportunity of this magnitude to perform in a facility that's this nice and to have a local university that's so willing to collaborate," Shaffner said.

Concerto Grosso will be the finale of the evening. The Central High School Orchestra will also be joining the symphony on the second half of the program to perform the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Richard Meyer's "Mantras."

The Southeast Missouri Symphony will open the concert by performing Edvard Grieg's "Holberg" suite, followed by Serenade for Strings by English composer Edward Elgar. Elgar is best known for composing the graduation processional "Pomp and Circumstance."

A special guest artist, harp soloist Juliette Buchanan will join the symphony on "Aria in Classical Style" by Marcel Grandjany; and Claude Debussy's "Danses." Buchanan has performed as a soloist at the White House and at New York's Carnegie Hall.

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