Biography

Moni (Jasmine) Guo (b. 1993) is a classical pianist, contemporary concert composer, and film composer from Taiyuan, Shanxi, China. She has appeared as both a performer and composer in Asia, Europe, South America, Canada, and the United States. Known for her passion to use music to encourage and comfort people, she also hopes to use her work to bridge Western and Eastern culture. Her concert compositions have been performed by acclaimed soloists and ensembles worldwide, including Michael Kannen, Bella Hristova, David Kaplan, Jihye Chang, Stefano Greco, IIIZ+, Deviant Septet, The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, The CIM Symphony Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

As a film composer, Jasmine has scored over forty short films, with many showcased in renowned film festivals like AFI Fest, CAAM Fest, Cannes' American Pavilion, the LA Shorts International Festival, and distributed by The New Yorker and DUST. Notably, the short film Summer Ends, which she has scored, was nominated for the Student Academy Awards of 2021, and she received a nomination for Best Soundtrack in a Short Film at the Seattle Film Festival of 2022 for de closin night. The feature film, Pianoman (dir. Sunny Liu), which she has recently scored, has just won the Best Feature Documentary at the Nepal America International Film Festival of 2023. Her semi-improvisation score for the silent feature film Enchantment (dir. Robert Vignola, 1921), which she also performed as the pianist, was commissioned by and showcased at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Jasmine has previously served as the assistant to film composer Sharon Farber. Films she has helped with orchestrating and music preparation have been broadcasted on Lifetime, and have been screened at festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

A member of The Pi Kappa Lambda Society, ASCAP, The SCL, and AWFC, Jasmine has been the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including being the winner of the TNME student composition competition in 2018, 2nd place in the American Prize competition in 2020, named the recipient of the 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Award. She has also been selected by the ACO Earshot 2023 as one of four composers to have works recorded by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2023. Her piece "Fallen Skin, Flying Wings" has been performed at the Hear Now Festival in Los Angeles, and at the concert: nova-Made in Cincinnati.

Beginning her musical journey at the age of three, Jasmine continued her musical education at the Interlochen Arts Academy, The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (BM), Rice University (MM), and UCLA (PhD). Her extensive study includes composition lessons with luminaries like Samuel Adler, Shih-hui Chen, Richard Danielpour, Jason Eckardt, Peter Golub, Michael Hersch, Pierre Jalbert, Ian Krouse, Amy Kirsten, Cynthia Van Mannen, and Kay Rhie. She has also had various masterclasses with composers such as James Newton Howard, Steven Stucky, Shulamit Ran, George Lewis, Christopher Rouse, music editor Adam Smalley, among others.

Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Commercial Music Production at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jasmine Moni Guo