Some Surrey students have launched the Sunshine Band Club as a way to alleviate “COVID blues” for both the young musicians and those watching video of them performing.
Their goal is “to create music together and unite musicians with a common interest for a good cause.”
An hour-long video launched on Youtube shows band members in solo performances of mostly classical music, save for the pop-punk drums of Jeff Hu on Green Day’s “American Idiot.”
The virtual concert features youth from across the Lower Mainland performing a favourite piece of music.
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“All of our proceeds will go directly to the Vancouver General Hospital & UBC Hospital Foundation via our GoFundMe,” founder David Liu told the Now-Leader.
“A few of the co-founders, including myself, attend school in Surrey. Essentially, it’s Surrey based but due to COVID, we are operating virtually.” The co-founders are Owen Cui, Etan Huang and Kevin Hua.
The Sunshine Band Club, established in March, is online at vansunshinebandclub.weebly.com.
“Due to the recent pandemic, the majority of musical concerts and events have been canceled,” the website notes. “Because of this, we, a group of students from Surrey, BC, founded the Sunshine Band Club, a club where people can explore their passion for music and practice music virtually. The pandemic has brought us fear and uncertainties; however, playing music and teaching other children in the community through virtual means have helped us cope with the uncertainty of the pandemic. This is why we wanted to do more to help the community by hosting an online community concert.”
Other musicians featured in the band’s launch video are Maggie Lu, Brian Liu, Vanessa Qian, Stephanie Song, Ekaterina Gofsky, Keren Xu, Vicky Zeng, Jie Zhuang, Steven Gu, Tony Cai, Jenci Wei and Ben Bai.
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