By David Li, bostonese.com
In the day-long New England Chinese Professionals 2013 Lunar New Year Gala & Community Enrichment Forum, two new segments attracted many new attendees. Despite of more than 30 inches of snow from Blizzard Nemo in many parts of New England, most participates of “Voice of Boston” and “Meet Your Right One” still showed up on time in the afternoon of Feb. 10, the Chinese New Year day of 2013.
（Front row L to R）Jie Wang, Sophia Luo, Wanjun Qiao, Ru Zheng, Jian Ni, Jie Zhao with Long Li(fourth from left in second row) and other contestants.
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Meet Your Right One is a speed dating program. Sixteen pairs of single professionals showed up. According to Sean Shen, the rules are each participate in one sex group had five minutes to talk to all participates in the other sex group, and then select up to three participates to have further interactions. Mr. Shen of New England Chinese Information and Networking Association (NECINA) mentioned that the idea of Meet Your Right One was to help young members to find their match as they told him that they had few chances to meet new friends due to their busy work schedules. When the afternoon ended, six pairs of participates expressed interests in each other, and exchanged contact information. |
Participate No. 8 was a young lady working in the IT industry. She told me that she recently moved to Boston from upstate New York. “I have met a few interesting guys this afternoon. I hope we can start as friends and go from there.” Let’s hope the first encounters at Meet Your Right One on the Chinese New Year Day wold be the beginning of many sweet love stories.
The Voice of Boston singing contest had nine finalists, and was hosted by Ru Zheng and Jian Ni. In the two rounds of competitions in the afternoon, three contestants made to the final contest in the evening when they would perform in the main Gala cultural performances along side of professional artists. In the end, Long Li from Acton, Mass. won the first place of Voice of Boston singing contest with a wonderful Chinese folk song: the Boat Song from Wusuli River. Shuanghua Wu and Jianhua Jian took second and third place finishes respectively.
The following is brief introduction of the three judges for Voice of Boston singing contest.
Mr. Wanjun Qiao is the founder, Chairman and Art Director of North American Chorus Association (NACA). Mr Qiao holds music degrees from China’s prestigious Central Conservatory of Music and Berklee College of Music in Boston. Mr. Qiao’s professional activites as a music judge include:2008 the 13th CCTV Young Vocalist Competition North American district panelist; 2011 Chairman of the judge panel of “Water Cube” Oversea Young Chinese Song Competition; 2012 First Asian Vocalist Competition judge panelist in Hong Kong; 2012 Singapore International Chinese Art Festival panelist.
Jie Wang is currently a faculty member at Berklee College of Music. Born to a musical family, she started out in a children’s singing and dance troupe in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. Jie graduated from Berklee College of Music Summa Cum Laude. At Berklee, Jie focused on vocal performance study, mainly in musical theatre style and performed several lead roles of music theater shows. Jie also participated a world premiere theater show “Wild Swan” with the American Repertoire Theatre. Recently, Jie performed in a new musical theatre show “ The Weaver of Raveloe” at the 2012 New York Musical theatre Festival.
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Sophia Luo was the national top 12 singers in Hua Er Duo Duo, the Biggest Girls’ Annual Talent Show in 2009, China. She has been judge for singing competitions back at school and broadcast talent shows in China such as Stars in Action(Min Xing Zai Xing Dong) etc. She was the Best New Artist Award winner in the Fifth National Outstanding Pop Music Composition Contest in 2008, held by the Chinese Musicians Association. Her composition tribute to the father of Modern Olympics Ave Coubertinis collected by the Olympics Music Library in 2008. Sophia Luo composed and performed for mourning the Sichuan Earthquake, and has many other diverse experiences as a singer, composer, and a judge. |
Please check out many nice pictures form the Gala by Jie Yan of BCPA below.
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