About Daniel Asia

Daniel Asia, composer-in-residence with the Phoenix Symphony through the Meet the Composer Orchestral Residencies Program (1991-1994), was born in Seattle in 1953. His many grants and fellowships include a Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Commission, Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four NEA Composer grants, a Rockefeller Grant, MacDowell Colony and Tanglewood Fellowships, and ASCAP and BMI composition prizes. His RIVALRIES for orchestra was a semi-finalist in the 1986 Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards competition.

Mr. Asia has been commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Seattle Youth Symphony, Colorado Philharmonic, Koussevitsky Music Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, D’Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts, Oberlin Woodwind Quintet, Musical Elements, guitarist Benjamin Verdery, pianist André-Michel Schub, pianist Jonathan Shames, bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk and oboist Sara Watkins, and flutist Robert Dick. Asia’s music has also been performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Aspen Chamber Orchestra, Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and numerous chamber ensembles throughout the U.S. And Europe.

Major orchestral works include AT THE FAR EDGE, BLACK LIGHT, two song cycles, a piano concerto, a trumpet concerto, and six symphonies. He has also written extensively for chamber ensembles and solo performers. Asia is also the founder Co-Music Director of the critically acclaimed New York-based contemporary ensemble Music Elements.

After receiving a B.A. Degree from Hampshire College, where he studied Music and European History, Mr. Asia attended the Yale School of Music, receiving the Master of Music degree. His major teachers included Jacob Druckman, Stephen Albert, Gunther Schuller, Isang Yun, Arthur Weisberg, Bruce MacCombie, Ron Perera, and Randall McClellan. After serving as Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music and Wind Ensemble at the Oberlin Conservatory from 1981 to 1986, Asia lived in London from 1986 to 1988 under the auspices of a U.K. Fulbright Arts Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Upon his return to the States, he became, and is presently, Professor of Composition and head of the Composition Department at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Asia’s music can be heard on the Summit, New World, Albany/Troy, Attacca, Innova, Soundset, Mushkaweet, and Koch International Classics, labels.