Daniel Asia

Daniel Isaac Asia (Seattle, 27 June 1953) is an American composer and conductor whose works have been performed by several orchestras and ensembles across the country. Trained in the second half of the twentieth century, he belongs to a generation that combined an academic inheritance with an open attitude towards popular influences.

He studied composition at Hampshire College, where he graduated in 1975, and then at Yale University, where he earned his master's degree in 1977. There his teachers included Druckman and MacCombie in composition and Arthur Weisberg in conducting. He also attended Schuller's courses at the Berkshire Music Center in 1979 and worked with Yun at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1980. Between 1980 and 1986 he taught at the Oberlin Conservatory. Holding a British Fulbright scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lived in London from 1986 to 1988, where he was a visiting professor at City University. Since 1988 he has been on the faculty of the University of Arizona, where he directs the university ensemble Arizona Contemporary Ensemble, and he was composer in residence with the Phoenix Symphony from 1991 to 1994. He also founded, with other musicians, the New York ensemble Musical Elements, which he co-directed from 1977.

His output from the 1970s, with pieces such as Miles Mix and Sand II, explores influences from popular music. In later stages, his symphonies and his Piano Concerto show a greater debt to Barber, Bernstein and Copland. He received grants from the NEA, the Fromm Foundation and the Koussevitzky Foundation, among others, and commissions from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.