Anna Guo

Thanks to her virtuosity, Anna Guo is one of the world's best yang-qin (a Chinese hammered dulcimer) players. She performed in China under her birth name Guo Min-qing before emigrating to Canada in 1996 where she adopted the more Western-friendly name of Anna Guo. She leads an active career as a performer and teacher of Chinese traditional music. Little is known of Guo's Chinese career. She has been active as a traditional musician since the 1960s. She led the Shanghai Women's Silk String Quintet from 1985 until her departure and also taught at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The group toured in Asia and Europe and recorded a couple of albums that are very hard to find outside of China. Guo also released two solo CDs in her native country in the early ‘90s. In 1996 Guo obtained her Canadian citizenship and settled in Toronto, Ontario where she resumed teaching and soon formed the Dunhuang Chamber Ensemble with which she tours North America. She has published two books on yang-qin technique that have become cursus material for students of the instrument. In 2001 she joined a select roster of Asian-Canadian musicians appearing on the Montreal label Oliver Sudden and released the solo album Chinese Traditional Yang-Qin Music, her most widely available recording to this day.
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