Daniel Asia is the principle investigator of the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music’s American Culture and Ideas Initiative. He is a unique and eclectic Jewish composer, conductor, educator, and writer. Professor Asia has been the recipient of grants from Meet the Composer, UK Fulbright, Guggeneheim Fellowship, MacDowell and Tanglewood fellowships, ASCAP and BMI prizes, Copland Fund grants, and numerous others. He was honored with a Music Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010. From 1991-1994 he was Composer- in Residence of the Phoenix Symphony.

Asia’s five symphonies have received wide acclaim from live performance and their international recordings. The Fifth Symphony, commissioned for the Tucson and Jerusalem symphony orchestras in celebration of Israel’s 60^th anniversary, is based on the poetry of the Jewish-American writer Paul Pines, the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, and Psalms.  

In the chamber music arena, Mr. Asia has written for, and been championed by, the Dorian Wind Quintet, American Brass Quintet, Meadowmount Trio, Cypress Quartet, Andre-Michel Schub (piano), Carter Brey (cello), Alex Klein (oboe), Benjamin Verdery (guitar), John Shirley-Quirk and Sara Watkins (baritone and oboe), Jonathan Shames (piano), among others. Under a Barlow Endowment grant, he finished a new work for The Czech Nonet,  the longest continuously performing chamber ensemble on the planet, founded in 1924.

Recent works include the opera, The Tin Angel, Divine Madness: An Oratorio, Iris, for piano four hands, and Iris: The Symphony (No. 6).

The recorded works of Daniel Asia may be heard on the labels of Summit, New World, Attacca, Albany, Babel, and Mushkatweek. His articles regarding music, culture and Jewish religion and life, have appeared in Academic Questions, The New Criterion, and the Huffington Post, and he is the editor of the book The Future of (High) Culture in America. Asia is Professor of Music at the University of Arizona. For further information, visit his websites at www.danielasia.net and www.tinangelopera.com

Listen to Gateways, by Daniel Asia