Blast! to rattle the walls of Bedell

BLAST!, a performance born out of the marching band style of music, will come to Southeast Missouri State University this month.

The Tony and Emmy Award-winning production features 34 performers who mix together percussion and brass instruments with visual performance, creating music that resembles the same sound of a marching band.

"If you've ever felt your heart pounding when you hear music, those are the elements in BLAST!," Bob Cerchio, the assistant director of the Earl and Margie Holland School of Visual and Performing Arts, said.

"This is the Super Bowl of percussion and brass music, and it comes at you like you wouldn't believe," Cerchio said.

BLAST! co-producer and artistic director James Mason said in a press release that no performance has been staged like this before.

"We're truly creating a new musical genre with BLAST!," Mason said in the release. "Taking what Star of Indiana did on a football pitch, shrinking it to a theater, staging it with bold, theatrical lighting, set design and sound enhancement is really a challenge. But it's one we've found very exciting!"

The show will feature 17 songs taken from various genres of music. The songs include Chuck Mangione's "Land of Make Believe," Robert W. Smith's "Yellapalooza" and Don Ellis' "Lost."

"There are numbers people will recognize, but then the show morphs [the songs] into their own style," Cerchio said.

Visual performance also plays a crucial role in the presentation of this show.

"BLAST! is almost like an animation, only in BLAST! the animation comes to life with real people playing the music and interpreting it visually," Mason said in the release.

Cerchio said the performance utilizes the use of colors as a theme through the show in order to create an interactive experience between the performers and the audience. Lights and flags are used to showcase the color.

"During BLAST!, we explore the dramatic power of each color and actually embrace the audience with each color to stimulate and augment their emotions," Mason said in the release. "In the first act BLAST! utilizes the cool colors and the show remains somewhat aloof. ... Then with the second act, we begin to explore warm colors and we embrace the audience and interact with them to bring them into our show and into our world."

Cerchio began the process of booking the show for Southeast students after hearing about all the elements and styles BLAST! had to offer.

"You just keep trying and trying, and then it fits," Cerchio said. "It fits our budget, it fits our schedule and I believe it will fit our audience."

Cerchio feels that BLAST! is something the entire audience will walk away having enjoyed every minute of it.

"We have one night where people need to trust that we are going to give them a show that is going to blow them away, and that is exactly what BLAST! is going to do," Cerchio said.

BLAST! will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall at the River Campus. Tickets range from $33 to $39.

"I think there is something in this show for everyone with a wide variety of musical styles," Mason said in the release. "Our audiences are repeatedly blown away by the power and the presence of this type of brass, percussion and visual ensemble performance in a theater."