LONDON CALLING: MUSICIANS ON TOUR

When Dr. Robert Gifford started directing the Missouri Ambassadors of Music in 1990, only two buses were needed to shuttle the high school students between performances in the European capitals. Now it takes six buses, each of them color coded to make sure all 290 students and teachers make the trip from London to Paris, or from Innsbruck to Venice.

Among the venues the choir will perform in are Westminster Cathedral in London and St. Marks Cathedral in Venice.

The Ambassadors have spent the past three days at Southeast rehearsing the concert band, jazz band, orchestra and choir that each will perform five times abroad. They gave a farewell performance Wednesday night at Academic Auditorium and leave this morning for St. Louis, where they will catch planes for London to begin their 16-day tour of seven European countries.

For many, this will be their first trip outside the U.S. Chelsea Vande Drink, a junior at Eureka High School, was a bit frightened before going on last year's tour. "I had never flown and I didn't know how I'd absorb the culture," she said. "But the people were so nice."

In Switzerland last year, she sunbathed and had a snowball fight on the same day.

She's back for an encore.

"I know it made me a better player," Vande Drink said of tour. "And I have a lot more respect for people who are different from me."

A cellist, Vande Drink is planning a career as a musician and hopes to attend one of the great music schools, Oberlin or Berklee. But most of the students on the tour won't end up making music their career, Gifford says. They are talented but drawn by the sightseeing as much as the musical experience.

One year the students visited the Nazi prison camp at Dachau. This year they're seeing the musical "The Buddy Holly Story" in London.

Each has paid $3,000 to participate in the trip. They were recommended by their high school music teachers on the basis of their musicianship and character. Auditions for parts were held in Rolla Easter weekend.

The youngest is about 12, while the oldest staff members are in their 60s.

Gifford has programmed mostly classic American music, such tunes as "Shenandoah," "Circus Day" and "Stars and Stripes Forever." "I learned the first year, you don't try to play their music for them," he said.

It is a European tradition to clap along during "Stars and Stripes Forever." The last time the Ambassadors were in Switzerland they were asked to play eight encores of the tune.

Missouri is one of 13 states that participate in the Ambassadors program, which is run by a private company that does all the booking. The Kansas group is preceding the Missouri Ambassadors on the tour and Iowa will be right behind.