Based in Hong Kong since 1977, Scofield made most of his income as a publisher of The Shipping Gazette. Although his fortune came from outside of music, he said he has always been enthralled by it. At the age of 18 he stumbled upon a recording of Mozart’s, “The Marriage of Figaro at the Chicago Public Library.” “It was love at first sound,” he said during an interview at the offices of MacroValue, the fund management company which he heads alongside his publishing business. “As Louisa says in La Traviata, theatre is a place where wonderful stories are told.”
He has performed opera at university, sung in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Chorus, and now serves on the board of Opera Hong Kong. His community involvement with opera upped a gear in 2008, when he initiated FAMA (Foundation for the Arts and Music in Asia) and brought high definition screenings from New York’s Metropolitan Opera to Hong Kong cinemas — for the price of a cinema ticket. Scofield’s foundation also gives scholarships to the Academy for Performing Arts students to study opera.
Despite his best efforts, Scofield realized that a certain strata of society would be impossible to reach. Compared to The Met Live in HD in the US, which now garners over a million viewings annually, Hong Kong’s audience numbers are still in the thousands. Hong Kong’s surface is barely scratched when it comes to Western performing arts. Scofield realized that the city’s vast majority were unlikely to consider opera unless he brought it to them. With this thought, the pop-up tent concept was born.
“Hong Kong is now ready in terms of growing wealth, outlook, and mentality to see a flowering of the arts. People are developing a deep appreciation for it,” says Scofield.
Of course, one could argue that there are more worthwhile causes to give money to — welfare, education, poverty — and opera is frivolous compared to more basic, pressing needs of the world. But Scofield is compelled to make a difference and see the effects first hand. This is an important niche for him.
“We have other needs as humans, and there is a need to experience something beautiful,” he says. “I’m just a businessman who loves the arts and wants to bring a greater enjoyment of them to the people of the city that made him what he is. In a very small way, I’d like to be a man who makes this city part of what it is.”
About HKSG Group Media/Shipping Gazette
HKSG Media Ltd is one of the world’s largest providers of shipping information. It also hosts the largest shipping schedule database in the Asia Pacific and has been providing the industry with all the latest news and information on the container shipping market since 1984 through their dedicated staff in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asia.
Its 200 staff collect, research, and compile a comprehensive range of information on the services of 300 shipping companies, including the leading global ocean carriers. Through its network of offices in seven of the world’s top container ports, the company publishes seven magazines totaling 1,800 pages weekly and maintains a two giga byte database of transport services information. HKSG Media Ltd was founded in 1982 in Hong Kong and began to publish its dedicated magazines on China shipping in 1986.
HKSG Media Ltd has launched its new SG Mobile service, which will enable Shipping Gazette subscribers to access all the latest sailing and airfreight schedules as well as the most up-to-date shipping news and information, all on their mobile phones.
The new technology is aimed at making the valuable information that HKSG Media Ltd provides more accessible and more flexible for users whose job demands require them to be more mobile in order to meet their business needs.