Daniel Asia (b. 1953) is one of a small number of composers who has traversed all the realms of composition with equal skill. As testament to this, he is a 2009 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Elliott Hurwitt writes in a Schwann Opus review of the composer’s music, “Daniel Asia is a genuine creative spirit, an excellent composer…He is a welcome addition to the roster of our strongest group of living composers.“

His orchestral works have been commissioned or performed by the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Seattle, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Phoenix, American Composers Orchestra (New York City), Columbus (OH), Grand Rapids, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Tucson, Knoxville, Greensboro, Seattle Youth, Brooklyn, Colorado, and Pilsen (Czech Republic) Philharmonics. Asia’s works have been performed by renowned conductors including Zdenek Macal, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Eiji Oue, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Hermann Michael, Carl St. Clair, James Sedares, Stuart Malina, Robert Bernhardt, George Hanson, Jonathan Shames, Odaline de la Martinez, and Christopher Kendall.

He is a recipient of prestigious grants and fellowships in music, including a Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Consortium Commission, United Kingdom Fulbright Arts Award Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four NEA Composers Grants, a M. B. Rockefeller Grant, an Aaron Copland Fund for Music Grant, MacDowell Colony and Tanglewood Fellowships, ASCAP and BMI composition prizes, and a DAAD fellowship for study in Germany.

Daniel Asia has been Professor of Music at the University of Arizona since 1988 and director of the UA Center for American Culture and Ideas since its founding in 2008. In 2024, Maestro Asia was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Maestro Asia’s The Tin Angel Opera is being produced by Teatro Grattacielo and is premiering at La MaMa Theater in New York City on June 28th and 29th, 2025.