One bright side of spending so much time apart during the coronavirus pandemic has been all the creative ways people have found to come together, from afar. One such effort — a series of virtual musical performances orchestrated by a student from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee — has managed to bring together millions.

Senior composition student Shelbie Rassler told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston she was shocked by the response to her first video, a cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "What the World Needs Now is Love.”

“I never could have imagined it would reach the places that it has,” she said. “Not in a million years.”

The video, which Rassler pieced together from more than 70 individual performances sent in from across the country by her friends and classmates, was viewed close to 2 million times on YouTube and was picked up by The Today Show and Good Morning America, among others.

She said she came up with the idea on her way home from Berklee, after the school decided to move all classes online in response to the pandemic.

“I wanted to just find a way to just bring my community back together and kind of just create a collaborative endeavor that my friends could be part of,” Rassler explained. “Not having graduation, not having my senior recital and all of these things my friends and I had been preparing for for so long … I wanted to do something in lieu of all the things lost and it just kind of organically turned into this.”

Rassler released another virtual performance Wednesday, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. And this time, she said, she got to work with an even broader community of musicians.

“The players in this are some of the most incredible musicians out there,” she said. “From Jazz at Lincoln Center to Beyoncé’s band … and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, just such talented and incredible musicians and singers from all around the country.”

They performed a version of the song “ Happy Birthday World,” which was written by Newton drama teacher Aline Shader in 1994. Several of the performers — now professional musicians — were once students of Shader’s.

Rassler said she couldn’t be happier about what has come out of such a terrible situation.

“I’m so thrilled because I have so much fun creating these videos,” she said. “I feel so lucky right now.”