Strike up the bands

Located along the Haihe River and a short high-speed train ride from Beijing, the building of the Tianjin school was designed by Diller Scofidio+ Renfro, the same firm responsible for the 2009 expansion of Juilliard's iconic New York home.

Founded in 1905 and located at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education.

The Tianjin school project started in 2015. While accompanying President Xi Jinping on a State visit to the US, his wife Peng Liyuan visited the Juilliard School in New York.

Thirty-nine students from 11 countries and regions joined the Tianjin campus' inaugural graduate studies program, which offers three collaborative majors in orchestral studies, chamber music and collaborative piano.

Alla Sorokoletova is one of the graduate students on the Tianjin campus. She plays the flute and majors in orchestral studies.

The flutist, who is from Uzbekistan, graduated from the State Conservatory of Uzbekistan in 2010 with a bachelor of arts degree in flute performance and received her master of arts in the same subject from Lynn University (a private Florida college) in 2017.

She says she couldn't get her visa to China because of the travel restrictions. The overseas office in Tianjin got in touch with her and helped.

"It was an incredible story that I could finally come to study here," says Sorokoletova. "The degrees and high-quality instruments were not available to me in my home country. It's my hope to someday be able to share the knowledge and experience I gain from my studies abroad in my home city and finally become a great performer and teacher."