On the plane ride home from Boston to Florida, Shelbie Rassler began to come to terms with the wrench that the coronavirus pandemic had thrown into her life. As a senior composition student at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, major life events were under threat of being postponed or canceled altogether: her graduation, senior recital, and the Cannes Film Festival, which she was supposed to attend for a film that she scored. Rassler, along with her peers, were all dealing with disappointment and uncertainty of a global pandemic, when suddenly an idea occurred to her: what better way to cope than through music? She shares exactly what she did next, and how she did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy friends and I were all quite devastated about everything that we had worked for,\u201d she says. \u201cI just wanted to figure out a way to keep the community together and figure out something that can create a collaboration for all of us, even though we weren\u2019t able to be in the same place at the same time.\u201d
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Rassler rallied 75 of her Boston Conservatory cohorts to create a virtual orchestration of the Burt Bacharach\/Hal David classic, \u201cWhat the World Needs Now.\u201d To date, her video has racked up more than 1.2 million views on YouTube and circulated major news outlets. She says her main goal was to provide inspiration for people around the world who are struggling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m just really happy that it is giving people some optimism and some positivity,\u201d she says. \u201cThe fact that it can be even just a little distraction from what\u2019s going on in the world for four minutes, that\u2019s all I could ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n