JAZZ CONCERT TO BENEFIT LOCAL FIN ARTS

An upcoming jazz concert inspired by a Christmas Eve reunion of eighth-grade sweethearts will benefit fine arts programs in the Cape Girardeau public schools and public radio station KRCU-FM.

The concert, called "An Evening Among Friends," will be presented Nov. 26 at the Osage Community Centre.

Music will be provided by the Cotangent Jazz Quartet led by former Cape Girardeau resident Bill Gerhardt. Gerhardt and the other three musicians in the band are based in New York City but most have performed for years in Europe.

Back in eighth grade at Central Junior High School, Gerhardt was the first boyfriend of Debby Erlbacher Steger, the Cape Girardeau businesswoman who is organizing the event. After her father ran into Gerhardt at a coffee shop here during the Christmas holidays last year, he suggested she give her former classmate a call.

The concert evolved from their dinner together.

Two years ago Erlbacher Steger organized a golf tournament that raised $22,000 for multiple sclerosis causes. Last year she helped coordinate a fair at Arena Park for VIP Industries.

Erlbacher Steger, the president and chief executive officer of Occupational Health Clinic Inc., said she organizes benefits as a respite from the deluge of paperwork her job brings.

"I escape to an event," she said.

The arts have been important to her since as a dyslexic 10-year-old she discovered she could make A's in art. "Art gave me something to feel good about myself," she said.

Gerhardt is a keyboardist who worked at KRCU-FM before going off to school at the renowned jazz incubator North Texas State University. He spent five years on the road before settling in Charlotte, N.C., and forming a quintet that won the 1988 Down Beat Music Festival first prize.

Gerhardt moved to Amsterdam in 1990 to play and record.

Other members of his band include Paris-born bassist Francois Moutin, who has a doctorate in physics, New York City saxophonist Marc Mommaas and drummer Tim Horner, a graduate of the Berklee School of Music.

Together, the members of the band have appeared on more than 200 CDs.

While preparing for the benefit, Erlbacher Steger asked art and music teachers in the city's public schools to produce a wish list. The cost of everything on the list amounts to $32,000. The art teachers need equipment -- sculpting and printmaking tools at Cape Central, kilns at the junior high school, Schultz and the new Blanchard School, and various multimedia materials at the other elementary schools -- for the new curriculum they are writing.

The music programs have their own wish list.

Erlbacher Steger doesn't know whether it is possible to raise enough money to buy it all. She also wants to give $5,000 to KRCU.

Gerhardt has waived his own fee, and more than half the cost of the CDs sold before and at the event will benefit the schools' fine arts programs and KRCU.

Shivelbine's Music Store is donating the use of the sound system and a grand piano. Carpet will be laid in the Osage Community Centre to improve the acoustics.

One $10,000 corporate sponsor is aboard and a $5,000 sponsor still is being sought.

Seating is limited. Faculty at the university and the schools are being given the first chance to buy tickets.

Corporate tables will go on sale next week at $300 to $500 per table.

After that tickets will be offered to Steger Erlbacher's graduating class and to parents of students in the schools. Tickets will go on sale to the public Nov. 8.