Her passions are more than music

As a music professor Beth Tibbs, Ph.D., obviously adores music, but don't try to corral her into picking music as her only passion.

Tibbs' interests are too varied for that, a fact she'll prove on the basketball court, in a European history class held in Austria and taught in German or maybe onboard a sailboat skipping across the waters toward yet another championship.

Tibbs just likes life, taking a little of this here and a bit of that there to create a life that's colorful, entertaining - and moving at a maddening pace.

"I really do love a lot of different things in life. I don't believe in having just one passion. I was a total jock growing up and I still am. There's just too much out there to settle on one thing."

But, like it or not, most of Yuma County knows Tibbs as a professor at Arizona Western College, where she's best known as the founder and director of the Yuma Youth Choir. Tibbs and her sweet-sounding choir have made headlines not only for their concerts of classical music, but also for their impressive performance trips to Europe.

Tibbs took the Yuma Youth Choir to Germany and Austria two years ago when the choir was invited to participate in the exclusive Mozart Festival. Now, at the end of this month, the choir is embarking on a tour of Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, where the kids will perform at the famous Notre Dame Cathedral and tour everything from the Eiffel Tower and Louvre art museum to the Anne Frank house and tulip markets of Amsterdam.

Tibbs created the Yuma Youth Choir in 2003. She explains that her greatest inspiration for the choir was the alarm she felt as she watched more and more local schools downsize or completely eliminate their music programs.

"I saw such a great need out there."

Tibbs started out with 12 singers. Today that number has grown to more than 50. Students range in age from 9 to their early 20s and represent schools from all over Yuma. Students also come from San Pasqual Unified School District, where Tibbs saw such a serious need for music education that she created a special program for those Winterhaven students. Not only can they participate in the choir, but students are also bused to AWC once a week for formal music training with Tibbs.

Tibbs knows the importance of music in a young person's life. As a youngster growing up in Manitou Beach, Mich., one of her great loves was piano, which she studied before branching into voice and later teaching and directing.

"My childhood, and maybe as I'm getting older I'm idealizing it more, but I really had a great childhood," she said. "I was so fortunate and just so lucky. I had the best parents in the world."

Her first love back then was definitely related to water.

"Our house was right on the water of Devil's Lake, which was part of my life every day," Tibbs said. "We were always skiing, swimming or sailing. In the winter we ice skated, road snowmobiles on the lake and my dad had an ice sailboat. That boat was such a blast. It just flew!"

Tibbs and her father sailed competitively around the country, ranging from all the Great Lakes to the Finger Lakes of Vermont.

At the age of 7, she and a friend won the Sunfish North American Championship. "I was her crew," Tibbs said. "That really made the news."

She also sailed competitively with friends who were Olympic sailers. "We won some really great competitions. I won the Michigan Women's Division once," she said. "I was the skipper."

Tibbs also played basketball and even tried to start her own girls-only football team.

"I was never voted most important player, but I was always Miss Hustle year after year," she said, adding how that early determination on the court has translated into powerful drive found in all parts of her adult life.

"I'm extremely driven. I don't accept failure. I'll find a way to get done whatever I need to get done. I can create things and I can figure out how to make things happen."

Surprisingly Tibbs wasn't dreaming about becoming a music professor. No, her first ambition was a bit bigger.

"I was a real history freak and was obsessed with becoming president of the United States! When I was in elementary school I read every single biography and book about presidents I could find."

Her school's librarian was forced to call other libraries in the area so books could be borrowed to fulfill Tibbs' hunger for information.

"I knew every fact about every president. I knew every date related to them, what their last words were, what their children's names were."

Tibbs' plans changed in high school.

"I thought I'd go into the Foreign Service, then work my way into the White House."

Her recent trips to Europe aren't her first, either. Tibbs traveled to Europe in college with a choir and later backpacked there for a month. During college she attended the American University in Vienna. She studied politics, German, history of Germanic countries and she traveled all over, including a trip to then-Communist East Berlin.

"While I was there I worked for an institute where foreign scholars did sociological research," she said.

Tibbs earned a history degree from Adrian College, then after deciding to take up music, she earned her doctorate in musicology from the University of Michigan.

Tibbs moved here in the late 1990s and insists she hasn't stopped being a jock. Actually she's got the wounds to prove it. She broke her wrist while playing basketball awhile back and recently broke her foot while playing tennis. She still likes to shoot hoops with friends once in awhile and fondly recalls her experiences running marathons and a triathlon.

Still on her athletic to-do list is her dream to climb a mountain someday.

Tibbs grins when she acknowledges that her life is certainly anything but orthodox - and that's fine by her.

"I'm crazy. I know it," she said. "But normal and boring people don't change the world. It's the weird people that do."

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Tag along with Darin and the Yuma Youth Choir European tour June 24-July 3. Reporter Darin Fenger will be writing daily stories and blogs and taking photos and videos. Check it out: yumasun.com/choirineurope