Students strike a chord with the past

During the five-day exchange program, students also had two master classes. On May 17, two concerts were held, featuring student chamber music ensembles from the Juilliard School in New York, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the Central Conservatory of Music, the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and the Korea National University of Arts.

According to He Wei, CEO and artistic director of the Tianjin Juilliard School, the school has quickly resumed international cultural exchange programs after the country optimized its control measures on the COVID-19 pandemic.

On May 18, a roundtable discussion was held at the Tianjin school with leaders of conservatories from the 15 music schools, including Peter Tornquist, dean of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music and Ye Xiaogang, dean of the School of Music, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. They shared ideas about music education and cultural exchange programs after the pandemic.

"We have been through such a difficult global time and now we finally can come together," says President Emeritus Joseph W. Polisi, who led the Juilliard School in New York for 34 years (1984-2018), as the longest presidential term in the history of the school.

"The idea of Tianjin Juilliard has been about people-to-people exchange from the very beginning. All of us around this table have the opportunity to contribute to that," says Polisi, who witnessed and promoted the launch of the new campus of Tianjin Juilliard when the China-US collaborative project started in 2015.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn