Jiayi Guo is a 20 year old uprising Hong Kong-born pianist, composer and bandleader currently finishing her studies of jazz piano performance and composition at the Berklee College of Music and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Guo began as a classically trained pianist, studying with Dr. Yan Yun from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She went on in her childhood to win consecutive awards in the 2010 Hong Kong International 200th Anniversary of Chopin Youth Piano Competition. After moving to the US, in 2016 she performed solo piano at the prestigious Carnegie Hall as a winner of the 13th Annual American Arts Festival competition. Guo then discovered her passion and future in jazz, improvisation, and composition in high school.

She considers herself a pianist foremost, with personal influences from Geri Allen, Thelonious Monk and Charles Lloyd. Guo’s performance studies remain in the tradition of jazz, however she is also an unyielding student of the free and the avant garde. At Berklee, she has studied and continues mentorship under distinguished artists such as Kris Davis, Fransisco Mela, Yoko Miwa, and Utar Artun. Guo has performed with George Garzone in the Berklee Performance Center Signature Series, as well played with David Fiuczynski at the annual concert of the American Academy of World Music. As a bandleader Guo has brought her musical groups to perform all over the Boston area playing original music, including the International Boston Asian Music Festivals of the years ‘21- ‘24, Harvard CamLab, the Mad Monkfish, the PostUnderground, and Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Raised in a family of traditional Chinese folk musicians, Guo’s artistry is rooted with a global influence, as she seeks to intertwine the sounds of contemporary and traditional jazz, the avant garde, and traditional Chinese music. As a composer and arranger, Guo is multifaceted writing for her smaller jazz combo groups as well as large orchestral commissions. In 2023, she arranged for the Orquestra Chinesa de Macau, configuring popular jazz music to be played in a traditional chinese instrument orchestra. Guo’s arrangement works also include Suona and Trumpet with Orchestra, performed by her father, suona virtuoso Yazhi Guo and trumpeter Dr. Alexander Freund with the International Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in late 2024. She has completed copyist work for the Silk Road Ensemble, a music collective and organization founded by renowned cellist YoYo Ma.