Christopher Tin
Biography
California-born, British-educated Christopher Tin is a two-time Grammy-winning composer of concert and media music. Time Magazine calls his music 'rousing' and 'anthemic', while The Guardian calls it 'joyful' and 'an intelligent meeting of melody and theme'. His output is strikingly diverse: ranging from lush symphonic works, to world-music infused choral anthems, to electro-acoustic film and video game scores.
His music has been performed and premiered in many of the world's most prestigious venues: Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, where he had an entire concert devoted to his music. He has also been performed by ensembles diverse as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Metropole Orkest, and US Air Force Band.
His song "Baba Yetu", a Swahili setting of The Lord's Prayer, is a modern choral standard, fusing together infectious melody and gospel rhythms with complex modulations and soaring orchestration. It was the winner of the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals, and is one of the all-time best-selling choral octavos for Alfred Publishing, as well as being one of the most frequently performed contemporary choral pieces. Originally written as the theme song for the video game Civilization IV, its place in history was cemented when the Guinness Book of World Records recognized it as the first piece of music written for a video game ever to win a Grammy. It's also one of the only pieces of video game music, or contemporary choral music, to transcend into pop culture. It's been licensed for use by groups ranging from Premier League Football to the Vatican. Two different contestants performed it in the same season of America's Got Talent. It was even a question on the legendary game show Jeopardy!
Tin's self-released albums have also achieved considerable acclaim. His debut album, the multi-lingual song cycle Calling All Dawns, won him a second Grammy in 2011 for Best Classical Crossover Album, and his follow-up release The Drop That Contained the Sea debuted at #1 on Billboard's classical charts, and premiered to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. His third album To Shiver the Sky also debuted at #1, and was funded by a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign that raised $221,415, smashing all previous classical music crowdfunding records. His fourth album, The Lost Birds, is a collaboration with acclaimed British vocal ensemble VOCES8, and will be released September 2022 on Decca Classics.
Tin is signed to an exclusive record deal with Universal under their DeccaGold and Decca Records US labels. His publishing is represented by Concord, and his sheet music is represented by Boosey & Hawkes.
His film work includes songs and additional music for feature films Crazy Rich Asians, Sausage Party, X2: X-Men United, and Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs Evil; and scores for Suddenly Seventeen, Tess, Dante's Inferno and Dead Space: Aftermath. His game work includes his critically acclaimed music for Civilization IV and Civilization VI, PGA Tour 2K21, Old World, Offworld Trading Company and Karateka. He also co-created the startup sound for the original Microsoft Surface computing platform.
Born to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, Tin grew up in northern California, firmly grounded in classical music, but heavily influenced by jazz, musical theatre, and the underground rave scene of '90s San Francisco. He did his undergraduate work at Stanford and Oxford, graduating with honors with a BA in Music and English, and an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. He then received an MMus with Distinction from the Royal College of Music in London, where he graduated at the top of his class and won the Joseph Horovitz Composition Prize. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Sundance Institute Fellowship, and BMI Conducting Fellowship.
Tin is an in-demand collaborator, working with musicians across a wide-range of genres: Lang Lang, Danielle de Niese, Alan Menken, BT, and Danny Elfman, to name a few. He is composer-in-residence with DCINY, and has received commissions by the US Embassy in the United Kingdom, Stratus Chamber Orchestra, Bangor Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra at St. Matthews, and ISCMS Festival. He is Honorary Artistic Director of the United Nations Chamber Music Society, Honorary President of the International Choral Festival Wales, and a patron of El Sistema France. He was also a guest judge on the Welsh singing show Cor Cymru.
He works out of his own custom-built studio in Santa Monica, CA.
