Tina Root (born Bettina Root), also now known as Tina Minero, is an American classically trained female

vocalist Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

and

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

from

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, perhaps most famous for her work performing as the lead singer of

Switchblade Symphony Switchblade Symphony was an American rock band from San Francisco, California. Their music combined orchestral sounds with heavy synth sequences and ethereal vocals to create a union of classical music and gothic rock. History Switchblade S ...

during the mid- to late 1990s. Her latest work included a solo performance and recording project,

Tre Lux Tre Lux (also known as Tré Lux) is the solo trip hop project of Tina Root, the vocalist of Switchblade Symphony. A Strange Gathering Her first full-length album, ''A Strange Gathering'', was released September 19, 2006. It is composed of cover ...

, and a partnership project, called Small Halo, with guitarist and fellow songwriter

George Earth George Earth (born July 3, 1966) is an American musician, guitarist, songwriter, composer, music producer, comic book artist, and talk show host from Echo Park, California. He is perhaps best known as the lead guitarist for both World Entert ...

Biography

Tina Root was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and still resides there. She is a classically trained vocalist with a background in

musical theater Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement ...

. She married in June 2002 and has a daughter, Gabriella Star Minero, who was born in June 2007. She formed the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

-based band Switchblade Symphony in 1989, with composer

Susan Wallace Susan Arnold Elston Wallace (December 25, 1830 – October 1, 1907) was an American author and poet from Crawfordsville, Indiana. In addition to writing travel articles for several American magazines and newspapers, Wallace published six books, fi ...

. They performed and recorded with several other band members over the years, including guitarists

Robin Jacobs A list of notable characters from the NBC soap opera ''Days of Our Lives'' that significantly impacted storylines and debuted between January 1, 1980, and the end of 1989, in order of first appearance. DJ Craig Donald Craig Jr., known as "DJ" a ...

and

, and drummers Eric Gebow, and Scott van Shoick. They released several records on

Cleopatra Records Cleopatra Records is an American independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1992 by Brian Perera. The record label has since grown into a family of labels, including Hypnotic Records, Purple Pyramid Records, Dea ...

, including the critically acclaimed albums ''

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

'' in 1995, ''

Scrapbook Scrapbook may refer to: * Scrapbooking, the process of making a scrapbook Software * Scrapbook, an early (1970s) information storage and retrieval system * Scrapbook (Mac OS), a Mac OS application * ScrapBook, a Firefox extension Film and TV * ...

'' in 1997, ''

Bread and Jam for Frances ''Bread and Jam for Frances'' is the second studio album by Switchblade Symphony. It was recorded at Brilliant Studios in San Francisco and Private Island Trax in Hollywood and mastered at Private Island Trax. The original CD artwork erroneou ...

'' in 1997 and ''

The Three Calamities ''The Three Calamities'' is the third and final studio album from Switchblade Symphony. The album peaked at #25 on the CMJ CMJ Holdings Corp. is a music events and online media company, originally founded in 1978, which ran a website, host ...

'' in 1999, and performed international tours in support of those albums until the group disbanded in 1999. In April 2001, she created the solo

trip hop Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with "downtempo") is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic music, psychedelic fusion of hip hop music, hip hop ...

project,

, performing her first show as Tre Lux in

Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pea ...

, Canada in January 2002, with the help of San Francisco duo BeatDestruct. She has so far recorded one full-length album as Tre Lux (also known as Tré Lux), entitled '' A Strange Gathering'', released in 2006 and featuring her covers of several other artists' hits, including one from Switchblade Symphony, Bad Trash. In 2008, she reunited musically with former Switchblade Symphony guitarist George Earth to form Small Halo, a project that has so far recorded one self-titled five-song EP, which they released in 2009. In 2010, Tina recorded vocals on the

MC Lars Andrew Robert Nielsen (born October 6, 1982), known professionally as MC Lars, is an American record producer, rapper, cartoonist, podcaster and educator. Lars is one of the self-proclaimed originators of "lit-hop", and is the founder and CEO of ...

song, '' Reaping Beauty'', inspired by the

SEGA is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

game

Bayonetta is a series of action-adventure games created by Hideki Kamiya and developed by PlatinumGames. The franchise was introduced in 2009 with ''Bayonetta''. Two sequels were released, ''Bayonetta 2'' (2014) and ''Bayonetta 3'' (2022), as well as a s ...

, which was included on the 2011 second re-release of Lars' album '' 21 Concepts (But a Hit Ain't One)''. In 2015, she retired from the music scene and is currently active as a realtor.

Discography

;With Switchblade Symphony * Full-length albums and EPs ** ''

'' (

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

) ** ''

'' (

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

) (out of print) ** ''

'' (1997) ** ''

'' (

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

) ** ''

Sinister Nostalgia Switchblade Symphony was an American rock band from San Francisco, California. Their music combined orchestral sounds with heavy synth sequences and ethereal vocals to create a union of classical music and gothic rock. History Switchblade Sy ...

'' (

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

) (

remix A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...

es) ** '' Sweet Little Witches'' (

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

) (live performances and video track) ** '' Serpentine Gallery Deluxe'' (

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

) * Singles ** ''Clown'' (

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

) ** ''Drool'' (

) * Other ** ''

Fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mo ...

'' (

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phil ...

) (out of print demo cassette) ** ''

Elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

'' (

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

) (out of print demo cassette) ** ''Girlscout'' (single) (recorded with

Jack Off Jill Jack Off Jill was an American gothic rock band from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, founded in 1992 by vocalist Jessicka, drummer Tenni Ah-Cha-Cha, bassist/keyboardist Agent Moulder, and guitarist Michelle Inhell. Though these four women were the init ...

) (

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

) * Compilations ** ''From The Machine'', featured the song: "Mine Eyes" (Index Records, 1990) ** ''Gothic Rock Volume 2: 80's Into 90's'' (1995) ** ''Gothik'' (1995) (re-released in

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

) ** ''Wired Injections'' (1996) ** ''Gothic Divas Presents: Switchblade Symphony, Tre Lux, and New Skin'' (Cleopatra, 2006) ** ''Psycho Tina's Hell House Of Horrors'', featured the song "Witches (Live)" (Cleopatra, ) ;As Tre Lux *'' A Strange Gathering'' Album (

) covers ;With Small Halo *'' Small Halo'' EP (

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

)

References

External links

Switchblade Symphony
on Myspace
Tre Lux
on Myspace
Official page for Tre Lux

Small Halo
on Myspace {{DEFAULTSORT:Root, Tina Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Singers from Los Angeles American women rock singers American women singer-songwriters 21st-century American women singers Switchblade Symphony members 21st-century American singers Singer-songwriters from California