By Alex Stoddard
It’s all in the doing.
What I mean is that life, as they say, is not a spectator sport. If you recall the Garth Brooks’ song “Standing Outside the Fire”, the lyrics say something to the affect:
Life is not living it is merely surviving if you’re standing outside the fire.
There are dozens of metaphors I could use to illustrate my point, but I’m sure you get it. This rather simple notion hit me stronger last week as I was golfing with two old friends. We used to live in the same neighborhood and only occasionally see each other. But we are still friends and have a strong bond between us. As I thought why this was still the case I realized the reason we had a bond of friendship was that we had gone through experiences in life together, serving and accomplishing things in our local Church unit. The act of doing bonded us. We weren’t merely spectators, but participants.
Now I’m undertaking another new experience. I’m sitting in the Seattle airport waiting for our plane to board to Beijing where, starting on Thursday, we will conduct the first ever Classical Singer International Vocal Competition.
I’ve never been to China. I don’t know Chinese. I don’t even sing opera 🙂 But from a series of contacts and conversations Classical Singer has teamed up with Libomo International to host this vocal competition at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
It was my job to recruit top American music schools to send faculty to judge this competition and recruit the Chinese singers. We have a tremendous list of schools and faculty joining us:
Juilliard School of Music
New England Conservatory of Music
Brigham Young University
Carnegie Mellon University
Cleveland Institute of Music
DePauw University
Ithaca College
Long School of Music of Bard College
Temple University
University of Houston
University of Minnesota
Viterbo University
It’s a bit of a leap of faith for all involved. We’re venturing into the unknown, onto foreign territory, but with great anticipation and excitement.
We’re living. We’re doing.
Life is a great adventure and this is our next chapter.
More to come throughout the next week . . .
Here are links to all the Blog posts from China:
Day 1 – www.auditionsplus.com/blog/?p=2976
Day 2 – www.auditionsplus.com/blog/?p=2986
Day 3 – www.auditionsplus.com/blog/?p=2991
Day 4 – www.auditionsplus.com/blog/?p=2997
Written by Alex Stoddard, General Manager of Classical Singer and Auditions Plus. Email Alex at alex@classicalsinger.com and follow him at twitter.com/alstod.
