Student debuts Cornell Chimes on TikTok

Even before she applied to Cornell, Chenchen Lu ’23 was drawn to the Cornell Chimes by the large scale of the instrument, which commands the entire Ithaca campus as its audience.

Now a chimesmaster, Lu has greatly expanded that audience by bringing her performances on the chimes to TikTok, amassing a following of more than 140,000 in the last year.

“I didn’t expect so many people to be interested in bells or this kind of music,” Lu said. “It’s been rewarding just to see so many people genuinely curious about the instrument and this raw, kind of weird sound quality that I’ve grown to love. It’s also brought more recognition to the instrument and to Cornell.”

To read more of Chenchen's story, see the full Cornell Chronicle article.