Strike up the bands

The Tianjin Juilliard School has finally started its graduate program, Chen Nan reports.

When Alexander Brose and He Wei first came to Tianjin in 2017 to prepare for the opening of the Tianjin Juilliard School-the first overseas campus of the New York-based performing arts conservatory-only four people were there and the building of the new school was still on paper.

Today, they have not only developed the Tianjin Juilliard School in numbers, with over 70 staff members, over 40 faculty members and about 130 students, but are also building the school culture gradually.

Even as the pandemic raged outside China, the school welcomed its inaugural graduate students and pre-college students in September.

"We were told at the end of this summer that we were, at least at that time, the only college in China to receive permission to bring in new international graduate students this year," says Brose, executive director and CEO of the Tianjin Juilliard School.

"It's very difficult to bring them back to China with travel restrictions caused by the pandemic.

"Countless people in both the United States and China, including those at the Juilliard School in New York and our partners here, have been working for as many as 10 years to make this day a reality," Brose says.

"It's a difficult period for Sino-US relations. We have received support from our partners in China, which never changed. We've already served as a cultural bridge between the two countries and we will continue to do so in the coming years."