Southeast Missouri Music Academy gives young musicians chance to write songs they can't yet play

She can't play it herself, but 9-year-old Bailey Schott has written an award-winning piece of music.

Bailey, of Cape Girardeau, is in her second year at the Southeast Missouri Music Academy, which helps children develop and fine-tune their musical abilities, both in performance and composition.

Each year, the academy has a competition for its young composers and this year Bailey won third place in the primary division for a piano piece called "Adventures."

"I wanted to make it sound like it looked like these two kids were on an adventure, and then they saw a bear or something and ran home," said Bailey, who was 8 at the time of the competition.

Rebecca Fulgham, director of the Music Academy, said this year the competition was tougher for the children as well as the judges, because the number of entries was up from last year.

"We cover a very wide range," she said. "We have students from Poplar Bluff, over in Illinois in Carbondale, Paducah, Perryville. It gives you an idea of what we cover."

The Music Academy doesn't necessarily have required work. The students who are enrolled for a full semester attend musicianship classes in addition to private lessons and in the spring all of the students work on composition pieces.

"At that point, it's up to the child and the parents whether they go ahead and get it finished completely and entered into the competition part or not," Fulgham said.

Bailey said it took around two months to finish her composition.

"I worked on it in my musicianship class," she said. "The teacher said we could bring it home, but I kept it there because I thought I could work on it better there."

When asked if she was proud, Bailey said, "Um, I guess. Not like 'stuck-up' proud, but just happy."

Bailey is staying with her grandmother, Jane Blanton, while her parents are working in Joplin, Mo., with the disaster relief efforts. Her father, Kyle, is the interim director with Catholic Relief Services in Cape Girardeau.

Fulgham said many of the students' compositions were difficult enough that the composers themselves couldn't perform them, and so their teachers performed it for them.

"I can play the right-hand part," Bailey said of her own composition.

She's practicing to play it all.

Although there are computer programs that handle composition, all of the students do their work on manuscript paper.

"A lot of them, once their pieces have been written, will put it in a computer to print it off, but this is totally from scratch," Fulgham said.

The students and their teachers performed the winning pieces in May at a Young Composers concert.

For information on enrolling a child in the Southeast Missouri Music Academy, visit www.semomusicacademy.org or call Rebecca Fulgham at 651-2378.

Other winners

* Senior high division: Catherine Jackson of Sikeston, Mo., first place; Nathan Williams of Cape Girardeau, second place; and Kristen Frohawk of Sikeston, third place.

* Junior high division: Vikas Rudrappa of Cape Girardeau, first place; Nathaniel Zeiger of Cape Girardeau, second place; and Kobin Kempe of Sikeston, third place.

* Elementary division: Jessica Kempe of Sikeston, first place; Sofia Voss of Cape Girardeau, second place; and Mitchell Humphrey of Cape Girardeau, third place.

* Primary division: Noah Hupp of Benton, first place; Abigail Michael of Cape Girardeau, second place; and Bailey Schott of Cape Girardeau, third place.