Tina Guo is a Chinese-born American cellist and erhuist from San Diego. Her international career as a cellist, electric cellist, erhuist, and composer is characterised by videos featuring theatrical backdrops and elaborate costumes, a range of genres, and an improvisatory style in film, television, and video game scores. Tina Guo was born in Shanghai, China to father Lu-Yan Guo, a concert cellist, and mother Fei-Fei Soong, a concert violinist, who are the current artistic directors of the California International Music and Art Festival, an annual event held in San Diego, California. Tina began playing piano at the age of 3 in China. At age five, she moved to the United States with her family, and began violin lessons with her mother.
In 2007, she toured Australia with Metaphor, an all-girl crossover band. Guo played with the Foo Fighters at the 2008 Grammy Awards, and with Off the Deep End she played at the wrap party for the Sundance Film Festival. With Midori Gotō, she played in Antonín Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12 at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. With pianist William Joseph, she performed in Mallorca, Spain for the International Philanthropy Summit. From 2011 to 2013, Guo toured as the featured electric cellist with Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour.
Guo performed alongside Johnny Marr of the Smiths and Hans Zimmer at the Premiere of Inception, and in a sold-out concert for DreamWorks with Hans Zimmer and John Powell, featuring her as soloist on electric cello and erhu. In 2015, she performed for the League of Legends World Championship to a sold-out arena at Staples Center in Los Angeles and an audience of 33 million streaming online. Guo was featured on the Electric Cello in a super-band for the event with The Crystal Method, Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Danny Lohner (NIN), Joe Letz (Combichrist), and the Hollywood Scoring Orchestra. Guo has also been a featured performer at Comic Con, BlizzCon, and with Video Games Live. In 2015, Guo was featured with video game music band Critical Hit, performing at most of the Wizard World Comic Cons. She featured in Baroque rock group Vivaldianno’s “City of Mirrors” Tour which appeared in arenas throughout Europe in June 2015.
The instrumental metal music video for her song “Queen Bee” won Best Short Film/Music Video at the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival. Her songs “Queen Bee” and “Forbidden City” are also available for download to play for Rock Band on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Metal Hammer Magazine UK described Guo as “an international sensation” and she was also featured in Glamour Magazine Russia with a two-page spread. Guo has toured with blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa as part of a diverse all-acoustic backup band, and Hans Zimmer. In October 2017, she toured as a headlining act to promote her album “Game On!” with John Huldt on guitar, Kfir Melamed on bass and Frank Klepacki on drums. In December 2018, she took on the God of War main theme song and collaborated with Inon Zur.
Guo recorded her first solo CD, Autumn Winds, a classical/new-age album. Her other album releases include The Journey, Eternity, Ray of Light, Tina Guo & Composers for Charity, A Cello Christmas, Cello Metal, a full length metal album and Hollywood’s Greatest Themes, an album of famous soundtracks re-imagined, Game On! and her recent album was Dies Irae. Guo has recorded on hundreds of albums, with artists such as John Legend, Ciara, David Archuleta, and Big K.R.I.T. She was featured on Al B. Sure!’s new single, “I Love It,” from his upcoming album Honey I’m Home and was also featured on Two Steps From Hell’s album SkyWorld. Inner Passion, her 2016 collaboration with pianist Peter Kater for Hearts of Space Records, debuted at number four on the Billboard New Age Albums chart. She is also notable as the soloist on electric cello creating the theme for Wonder Woman in the 2016 film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice with Hans Zimmer, which she reprised in the Wonder Woman standalone film with Rupert Gregson-Williams[13] as well as its 2020 sequel, Wonder Woman 1984, with Zimmer once again.
