Christopher Tin
American composer
Christopher Chiyan Tin (born May 21, 1976) is an American composer and conductor. His work is primarily orchestral and choral, often with a world music influence. He is a two-time Grammy Award winner, and has won various awards for his work in video game soundtracks and studio albums.
Tin is best known for his work on title themes for the Civilization video game series, specifically the main theme "Baba Yetu" from the video game Civilization IV, which, at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011, became the first piece of video game music to win a Grammy Award. This Grammy win has been considered a significant milestone for the critical acceptance of music from video games, and following this win the Recording Academy retitled their visual media categories to become more inclusive of video game soundtracks, before eventually creating a dedicated Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media in 2022.
Early life and education
Tin was born May 21, 1976 in Palo Alto, California, to immigrant parents from Hong Kong. He attended Stanford University, and had a brief period as an exchange student at the University of Oxford. He double majored in music composition and English literature, and minored in art history. In his time at university, he supplemented his studies by participating in various jazz, musical theatre, and world music student groups. Tin graduated in 1998, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors, and continued to study at Stanford, receiving a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, with an emphasis in film studies, in 1999.
“Christopher Tin” enters the record as american composer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Christopher, American and composer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1087016. VIAF identifies the subject as 187357748. The Library of Congress control number is no2011135160. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 2011, 2022 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christopher Tin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.