ACFS Concert and the Producer's Role
Mar. 1st, 2026 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipYesterday was a concert the acclaimed Shu Cheen Yu and Lotus Wind Choir for the Australia China Friendship Society (Victoria) which, in my role as president of the ACFS, I was co-producer. Held at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak, with its rather delicious Gothic revival architecture and superb acoustics, the concert was very successful. There were around 150 people in attendance, including representatives from the Consulate, Australia's former ambassador to China, and many Chinese community leaders. Shu Cheen Yu herself is really a star, trained in both Peking and Western operatic traditions; she has one of the most astounding voices I've ever heard, and she is such an impressive organiser and leader.
The concert itself was an equal balance between various European and Chinese traditional songs. I was especially taken by the passionate performance of the Neapolitan classic, "Santa Lucia!", and the sheer power and majesty of "Legend of the Dragon". It must be gently said that the concert was a bit of a financial success for the society, with several thousand dollars raised. As an entirely volunteer organisation that receives no outside grants, events like this are required for our survival. The generosity and support of members of Victoria's Chinese community toward the ACFS have not gone unnoticed, and nor has the exceptional support I was provided by members of the ACFS committee.
This is the first time I've produced a concert and, I must say, it is something that is not unlike other forms of event management. In the relatively recent past, I have organised conventions e.g., "Cyberpunk 2020: Year of the Stainless Steel Rat", "RuneQuest-Glorantha Con DownUnder IV" and "RuneQuest-Glorantha Con DownUnder III" (for the latter, I received the inaugural Greg Stafford Memorial Prize). With common characteristics, event management is essentially a subset of project management, which means that it is a unique activity that involves multiple people and is time-dependent. It involves having a governance structure, organising a team, reporting, timetabling, being very aware of dependencies and, as the production-project manager, being very sensitive to tolerances and being prepared to pick up the pieces very quickly when things go wrong. More than a decade ago, I actually did a graduate degree in project management, along with PRINCE2 certification. If you're ever involved in organising events, my notes on this subject might be helpful.
The concert itself was an equal balance between various European and Chinese traditional songs. I was especially taken by the passionate performance of the Neapolitan classic, "Santa Lucia!", and the sheer power and majesty of "Legend of the Dragon". It must be gently said that the concert was a bit of a financial success for the society, with several thousand dollars raised. As an entirely volunteer organisation that receives no outside grants, events like this are required for our survival. The generosity and support of members of Victoria's Chinese community toward the ACFS have not gone unnoticed, and nor has the exceptional support I was provided by members of the ACFS committee.
This is the first time I've produced a concert and, I must say, it is something that is not unlike other forms of event management. In the relatively recent past, I have organised conventions e.g., "Cyberpunk 2020: Year of the Stainless Steel Rat", "RuneQuest-Glorantha Con DownUnder IV" and "RuneQuest-Glorantha Con DownUnder III" (for the latter, I received the inaugural Greg Stafford Memorial Prize). With common characteristics, event management is essentially a subset of project management, which means that it is a unique activity that involves multiple people and is time-dependent. It involves having a governance structure, organising a team, reporting, timetabling, being very aware of dependencies and, as the production-project manager, being very sensitive to tolerances and being prepared to pick up the pieces very quickly when things go wrong. More than a decade ago, I actually did a graduate degree in project management, along with PRINCE2 certification. If you're ever involved in organising events, my notes on this subject might be helpful.
