Like a Butterfly Smashing Glass: Taking Flight with Cellist Tina Guo

Internationally acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated and BRIT Female Artist of the Year-nominated musician Tina Guo has established an international career as a virtuoso acoustic/electric cellist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and entrepreneur.

Tina Guo

Known for her unique genre-crossing style, she is one of the most recorded solo cellists of all time and can be heard on hundreds of blockbuster film, television, and game soundtracks. Tina is currently recording for four feature film soundtracks remotely from her home studio during the coronavirus pandemic, including DUNE (2021) and Top Gun: Maverick (2021). She has just completed her upcoming 2020 winter album Winter Night: Traces in the Snow and 2021 solo album Dies Irae released on Sony Masterworks.

Tina was an official brand partner of Bentley Motors, composing, performing, and producing original music. In 2019, Tina began her exclusive partnership with the Ritz-Carlton composing custom soundtracks inspired by their destinations. She has amassed over 50 million views on YouTube, and has a social reach of one million across her channels. A self-managed artist and self-made millionaire, Tina is passionate about investing, financial planning, and self actualization. She also directs, produces, and edits most of her own music videos, and offers career consultations to other creatives,

Tina Guo

encompassing sustainable career growth, branding, wealth building, stage performance, and being hands-on in today’s music business climate.

The Tina Guo Sample Libraries by Cinesamples is one of the best selling cello solo libraries on the market: Get The Complete Bundle Now. Tina also introduced a line of fine acoustic cellos, carbon fiber cello cases, cello pick-ups, and bows for string instruments. Learn more about Tina Guo Strings here.

As a classical soloist

Tina’s engagements with orchestras around the world include the San Diego Symphony, the State of Mexico National Symphony, the Thessaloniki State Symphony in Greece, the Petrobras Symphony in Brazil, and the Vancouver Island Symphony in British Columbia. She collaborated with violinist Midori Goto in Dvorak’s American String Quartet at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and completed four national tours of Mexico and Italy performing the Shostakovich, Dvorak, Haydn, and Saint-Saëns cello concertos.

Non-classical

Extremely Tina

Tina completed an acoustic tour, and two sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall with Blues Legend Joe Bonamassa and the live album from the Carnegie Hall concert reached #1 on the Blues Billboard Charts. 2016-Present, Tina tours as a featured soloist with Hans Zimmer Live. She was featured on screen in commercials for Mazda and United Airlines. She was a featured soloist in Cirque Du Soleil’s Michael Jackson “The Immortal” World Tour from 2011-2013, performing in sold-out arenas worldwide. The tour sold over 3.7 million tickets and is one of the highest-grossing tours of all time.

Tina performed with Skrillex, Dplo, and Justin Bieber at the Grammy Awards and with Sabaton and Beyond the Black at the world’s biggest Metal Festival: Wacken Open Air 2019 on the Main Stage. She also performed with Hans Zimmer at the Premiere of Inception and was featured at the League of Legends World Championship to a sold-out Staples Center in Los Angeles and an audience of 33 million streaming online. Tina has also been a featured performer at Comic-Con, Blizzcon, and Video Games Live. She has toured with Guitar Virtuoso Al Di Meola, one of the featured guests on her album “Cello Metal.”

Music for film

Tina is a featured soloist on the Soundtracks of Cyberpunk 2077, DUNE (2021), Top Gun: Maverick (2021), Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984, The Lion King (2019), Dunkirk, Sherlock Holmes, Inception, Iron Man 2, Batman VS Superman, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Boss Baby, The Monkey King 2, Clash of the Titans, Red Riding Hood, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Olympus Has Fallen, Escape Plan, CSI:NY, Vikings, The Borgias, Sleepy Hollow, Dominion, Iron Chef, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (as Octavia), League of Legends, Blizzard’s Diablo III and Hearthstone, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, III, and IV, Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Extinction, Revelation Online by Chinese game giant Netease, and Journey, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack.

Guo on the go

Tina can also be heard on the soundtracks of Kung Fu Panda 3, Hancock, Battle: Los Angeles, The Hangover Part II, Predators, Fast Five, Arthur, No Strings Attached, Beginners, Public Enemies, Rango, The Rite, X-Men: First Class, Your Highness, Yogi Bear, The Mentalist, Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, King of the Hill, commercials for Apple, Under Armour, and many others. Tina contributed electric cello to create elements that were used to create the sound of the Kaijus in Pacific Rim. Her arrangement of “The Flight of the Bumble-Bee” was featured in the end credits for The Heartbreak Kid. Tina composed music for the feature film Persecuted and has many compositions licensed into TV and film projects. She recently completed an album of music for licensing through Extreme Music with composer Frank Klepacki, to be released winter 2020. Tina has also recorded on hundreds of commercial albums with artists such as John Legend, Ciara, 3 Doors Down, and Big K.R.I.T.

Pop, Country, Rock

Tina Guo

Tina performed at the American Country Music Awards and American Music Awards with Carrie Underwood, on Dancing with the Stars with Carlos Santana and India Arie, Jimmy Kimmel Live with Ellie Goulding, the Lopez Show with Far East Movement, the Grammy Awards with the Foo Fighters, at the MTV Movie Awards, on American Idol, with the Battlestar Galactica Orchestra, at Sundance, the Playboy Mansion, and on the Ellen Show.

She has also performed with Adele, Pharrell, Alicia Keys, Steven Tyler, Katie Perry, The Tenors, Stevie Wonder, Peter Gabriel, Josh Groban, John Legend, LeAnn Rhimes, Chris Isaak, Il Divo, Ariana Grande, Lupe Fiasco, Common, Jennifer Hudson, and Michael McDonald.

Corporate Music

Corporate clients have included Fortune, Bentley Motors, Cartier, The Ritz-Carlton, AMC, Microsoft, Apple, Cephalon Biopharmaceutics, Adecco, KPMG, Nuskin, and the PGA.

Tina Guo Before Fame

Tina’s musical education began at the age of 3, when she started her piano studies in Shanghai, China. After coming to America at the age of 5, she began violin lessons with her mother. She later began studying the cello under her father’s instruction, Lu-Yan Guo, at 7. Tina continued her professional cello studies with Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music on full scholarship and was also a Governor’s Scholar for academic excellence.

Heritage Tina

Over the Top

Tina’s Music Video for “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 Rockband on Xbox 360 and PlayStation. Metal Hammer Magazine UK described Tina as “an international sensation,” and she was also featured in Glamour Magazine Russia and Official Playstation Magazine. Tina has received the Innovation Award from the Asian Heritage Awards, was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the Los Angeles Music Awards, and won in the New Age Category at the 2016 Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She was nominated for Best New Age Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards and Female Artist of the Year at the 2018 Classic BRIT Awards.


Guo Gear

Tina performs on her Gand & Bernardel Cello made in Paris, France, in 1880. On electric cello, she plays a customized Yamaha SVC-210.  Tina also plays an Erhu made in Shanghai, China and Native American Flutes made in the Navajo Nation.


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Chuck Schiele is an award-winning musician, producer, editorialist, artist, activist and music fan. He still plays every day.

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