CCM students and alumni create cross-cultural musical offering

In light of the pandemic, Junbo Zhou, a UC College-Conservatory of Music doctoral student in choral conducting, founded an organization to unite musicians from diverse backgrounds in creating universally-appealing art. His nonprofit, World's Harmony, set out to create an international music project to promote hope and unity. Watch the performance online.

After finding interested musicians through social media, Zhou tasked them with creating an at-home music video with one message — “We are family.” The musicians set to work arranging the music, translating the lyrics into several languages, recording themselves, and editing their work into a finished product. The final video features translations of the same lyrics in Spanish, Russian, Persian, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and English.

The CCM alumni involved with World’s Harmony and its new video are Samuel Chan (BM Voice, ’15), Chia-Jui He (MM Flute Performance, ’10; AD Flute Performance, ’19), Andrii Isakov (MM Violin Performance, ’19), Lauren McAllister (MM Voice, ’14), Brooks Taylor (BM Double Bass Performance, ’19) and Sean Taylor (DMA Choral Conducting, ’13). Current cello student Evanghelina Ciobanu also appears in the video.

View the virtual performance online. Visit the World’s Harmony Twitter page to learn more about the organization.