Moni (Jasmine) Guo (b. 1993) is a classical pianist, a 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. As a composer, Jasmine is highly interested in using her music to encourage and comfort people around the world; moreover, she also hopes to use her music as a bridge between Western and Eastern culture.

 

Jasmine's concert compositions have been read/performed by renowned soloists such as Miranda Cuckson, Courtney Orlando, Michael Kannen, Sarah Thornblade, Michael Kaufman, Jonathan Sacdalan, Bella Hristova, David Kaplan, Jihye Chang, Kyung Wha Chu, and Stefano Greco; ensembles such as IIIZ+, Deviant Septet, Texas New Music Ensemble, and Winsor Music. Furthermore, her orchestra music has been performed by The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Ben Manis), The Cleveland Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Shun Yao), and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Maurice Cohn).

 

As a film composer, Jasmine has scored over forty short films, including her recent short film Foreign Uncle (dir. Sining Xiang, distributed by The New Yorker) and Like Us (dir. Mikhail Saburov, distributed by DUST). Many of these short films have appeared at film festivals like the AFI Fest, the CAAM Fest, the American Pavilion in Cannes, the LAAP Film Festival, the LA Shorts International Festival, the Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival, the Urbanworld Film Festival, and many more. The short film Summer Ends (dir. Hailong Niu), which she scored in 2021, was nominated for the Student Academy Awards of 2021. Her score for the short film de closin night (dir. Shicong Zhu, on Omeleto) earned her a nomination for Best Soundtrack in Short Film at the Seattle Film Festival of 2022. 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, Summer of 2022. 

 

Jasmine is a member of The Pi Kappa Lambda Society, ASCAP, The SCL, and AWFC. She has received the P. Bruce Blair Award in Composition and the Pauline Favin Memorial Award in Piano in 2016, has been awarded the JCCAA Scholarship in 2017, and the Brown Fellowship from Rice University in 2016-7. She is the winner of the TNME student composition competition in 2018, and she is placed 2nd in the American Prize competition (orchestra music division) in 2020. She is a finalist of the 2019 ACO Sarasota Orchestra Competition and the 2020 ASCAP Morton Gould Award. She has received the honorable mention from ASMAC (American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers) Competition Awards in 2021. She has been named the 2021 ASCAP Morton Gould Award Recipient, and has been selected by the ACO Earshot 2023 as one of four composers to have works recorded by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2023. Her chamber piece Fallen Skin, Flying Wings has been performed at the Hear Now Festival in Los Angeles, Summer of 2021, at the concert: nova—Made in Cincinnati, Summer of 2023, and at the California Festival 2023. In 2023, Jasmine was selected by Forbes China as the 100 Most Influential Chinese. Jasmine was also one of the six composers selected by the League of American Orchestras, in partnership with the American Composers Orchestra, to write a new piece as part of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program.

 

Jasmine is currently serving as the Assistant Professor and Interim Program Director in Commercial Music Production at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she teaches Film Scoring, Songwriting, Studio Composition, and Desktop Music Production.

 

In 2022, she completed her Ph.D. studies at UCLA (Los Angeles, CA), where she studied with Richard Danielpour, Peter Golub, Ian Krouse, and Kay Rhie. Her Ph.D. research focused on scoring for visual media arts. Prior to her doctoral studies, Jasmine earned her Master's degree from Rice University (Houston, TX) in May 2018, where she studied with composers Shih-Hui Chen and Pierre Jalbert. In 2016, she completed her Bachelor's degree from The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University (MD, USA), majoring in both piano (studying with Brian Ganz) and composition (studying with Jason Eckardt, Amy Kirsten, and Michael Hersch) with a minor in Music Theory. In 2015, Jasmine studied composition with Samuel Adler and conducting with Emily Brown in Berlin at FUBiS, the Freie Universität Berlin. She attended various festivals such as the Montecito Music Festival as a pianist and the Atlantic Music Festival as a composer.

 

Among the years, Jasmine has had composition masterclasses/lessons with James Newton Howard, Steven Stucky, Shulamit Ran, Scott McAllister, Christopher Rouse, David Ludwig, Donald Crockett, George Tsontakis, Hannah Lash, Ken Ueno, Nils Vigeland, Pierre Jalbert, Robert Cuckson, Emil Awad, Chris Paul Harman, Adam Smalley, and Robert Paterson. She has also taken piano lessons with prestigious pianist Qifang Li.

 

While at UCLA, Jasmine was a TA for Music Theory, Keyboard Skills, and Film Music courses. She also was the theory instructor of the preparatory program at Rice University for two years and enjoyed working with students greatly. She 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.

 

Jasmine's earlier years were filled with music too. She began studying music at the age of three and started composing during her childhood. In 2010, she was accepted to Interlochen Arts Academy (MI, USA) as both a piano and a composition major studying with T. J. Lymenstull and Cynthia Van Mannen.

 

During her free time, Jasmine enjoys talking with friends and family, organizing her room, reading, and drawing. Besides being a musician, Jasmine used to be on the unicycle team, volleyball team, and basketball team.