Two international students’ dreams and hard work will be recognized in the final round of Encores, in which vocalist competitors battle to win cash prizes.

Wasabi Fan and Can Yu (nicknamed Fish) are two third-year Chinese City College students who created the first campus-wide singing competition, Encores, which takes place at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2 at the Fé Bland Forum on West Campus.

“Fish and I just wanted a campus-wide event for the students,” Fan said. “This event brings the local community and school together.”

China, where singing competitions are a staple of their school activities, inspired the two students to create Encores. Fan explained how singing competitions are big celebrations every year and how they “strengthen and raise their school spirit.” They wished to bring that feeling of unity to the 20,000 students at City College.

“We just thought the school was boring,” Fan said. “We should have something like that. Every year in Chinese schools, high schools, colleges and universities would have singing competitions. So we thought, well, that’s a good start.”

The auditions for the competition were last Thursday and Friday, where 30 excited contestants showed up representing several different nationalities.

Tom Harbeson, instructional computer lab coordinator, will judge this competition and was enthralled with the talent and style presented at the auditions.

“There was some very, very emotional singing done in languages I don’t understand,” Harbeson said. “But because of the emotion and feeling that went into it, you could still connect, so I was very impressed. “

Harbeson was not made a judge because of his qualifications in the technological department, but rather his extensive background as a musician. He has played in bands as both a lead vocalist and a percussionist. He explained how the 30 contestants covered several different music genres from pop, blues, theater music and even opera, all sung in different languages.

“There were a lot of different kinds of songs in different languages; there were Korean songs, Japanese songs, Swedish songs, Spanish songs and then, of course, English songs,” he said. “There even were Swedish patriotic anthems and traditional Spanish songs.”

Of the contestants, 16 were chosen to compete in the final competition on Friday. They have the chance to win cash prizes – $50 for third place, $100 for second place and $150 for first place. Tickets for the competition cost $5.

Since the Encores Competition was Fan and Yu’s idea, they were responsible for finding the location, the judges and the sponsors to make the contest possible. The competition is sponsored by three City College organizations: the Student Senate, International Ambassador Program and Phi Theta Kappa, all of which are organizations the two students are involved with.

“I work for the Student Senate and Fish and I are both international ambassadors,” Wasabi said. “Fish also got involved in a Phi Theta Kappa leadership. … Any leadership member has to make an event for this semester. So this was a good timing for our event.”

Fan and Yu have come a long way to make this event happen. Fan is very excited for the final competition and is eager to see how all their hard work will play out.

“I look most forward to holding this event successfully [without any] mistakes,” Fan said. “But I know that is not going to happen, so I just hope I can plan everything and prepare myself for every problem beforehand so that I can ensure that the show is good enough.”