Multischool concert performed as part of 2010 Children's Art Festival

Before the multischool concert of the 2010 Children's Art Festival on Friday night inside Academic Hall auditorium on the Southeast Missouri State University campus, students chatted excitedly to their friends and waved at family and friends as they took their seats.

The Southeast Missouri State University Percussion Ensemble opened the show as around 100 students in fourth through sixth grades took the stage. Schools represented included Clippard, Blanchard and St. Vincent elementary schools and Central Middle School in Cape Girardeau and West Lane Elementary and Jackson Middle School in Jackson.

The concert was sponsored by two grants received by the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri from the Missouri Arts Council and Commerce Bank's William T. Kemper Foundation, and a visual art component of the festival including a regional student art contest and gallery showing at the Arts Council gallery is sponsored by Southeast Missouri Hospital.

Deborah Spinner, whose son, Justin, is a fifth-grade student at St. Vincent, said the concert was different and that her son would participate if the concert was held again next year. Justin played a drum rhythm in the concert.

Eight songs were performed, including two commissioned especially for the concert -- "Peace Like a River," written by Roger Sams, and "Coral," written by Paul Corbiere, who also served as a guest clinician and director for the concert. Corbiere's "Coral" was a percussion piece featuring tropical-sounding rhythms.

Other songs, including "Great Big Sea," "Song of the River" and "A Distant Shore," were performed only by the student choir. The university's percussion ensemble performed one song alone, "Mother Earth Father Sky," which featured nature sounds.

For "Peace Like a River," student percussionists joined the choir, and for "Into the Frying Pan," the university percussionists joined the students. The concert ended with "Rhythm of the Rain" sung by the choir and accompanied by student percussionists and Corbiere playing a special rhythm.

Leslie Hoff's stepdaughter Amber goes to Jackson Middle School and played the xylophone in the concert.

Hoff said the concert featured an interesting choice of music. "I like that they can experience different genres of music and see the percussion," Hoff said. "This was a chance to expose them to different music."

Most of the seats were filled in the auditorium.

Students spent the days leading up to the concert rehearsing with two guest clinicians, Adrienne Broyles of the staff of the St. Louis Children's Choir and the Parkway School District in St. Louis, and Corbiere, an expert percussionist and music educator, along with Dr. Shane Mizicko, a percussion instructor from Southeast Missouri State University and Pam Dumey, a music teacher at Central Middle School.

The four instructors traveled to the participating schools Thursday to work with small groups of students. On Friday, the students visited the university campus, where they ate lunch and participated in final rehearsals.