For the 10th anniversary of Southeast Missouri State’s River Campus, everything has been special this year, including a select group of Southeast musicians traveling to Italy.

Each year before the final symphony concert of the season, the River Campus hosts a pre-concert dinner in order to raise money for student scholarships. This year, the money will go toward helping some student musicians who are traveling to Italy to play in an international orchestra over the summer.

Since the event is raising funds for travel to Italy, this year’s food will be none other than Italian themed.

According to Dr. Sara Edgerton, director of Southeast Missouri State University Orchestra, 12 of her students will have the opportunity to travel to an Italian music festival.

“The festival is a combination of American and Italian musicians,” Edgerton said “There are several faculty members traveling as well, so it’s a combination of students and faculty actually.”

The 12 students who will be traveling are Andrew Bailey, Matt Flanagan, Tony Imperiale, Allison Movesian, Amanda Nahm, Paul Quinlisk, William Reagan, Monet Royal, Abigail Sage, Nicholas Smentkowski, Evan Watkins, and Bailey Wooten.

Edgerton said all string players in the Southeast orchestra who were available to go were invited, but only specific wind musicians received an invitation because there wasn't room for all of them at the festival.

Edgerton is excited the selected students will participate in a life-changing experience of attending a professional-level festival.

“In the very first year we started the dinner, the orchestra went to China, and so that kind of gave us the stat for this,” Edgerton said. “It’s kind of exciting that nine years ago we did China, and now we have a number of students traveling to Italy. It’s kind of a neat connection.”

The dinner event is Monday April 24, at 6 p.m. The deadline to buy tickets was April 12, but if students are interested in supporting musicians and fellow students in the future tickets are $125 a piece and include dinner and the concert.