Ernesto Diaz-Infante

Since the mid-'90s, Ernesto Diaz-Infante counts as one of the most prolific avant-garde composer and improviser the U.S. West Coast has seen. He has performed and recorded music on piano, prepared guitar, and electronics; composed chamber music; improvised with a very large number of musicians from California, New York, and Chicago; and released a pile of CDs on very small independent labels such as Pax Recordings, Sweetstuff Media, Zzaj Productions, and Public Eyesore. He also curates the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival (since 1999) and the creative music series at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco (since 2000). His multifaceted career gives him the look of an eclectic or maverick artist, but the persistence and commanding seriousness with which he pursues his career is gaining him a small but dedicated following. Diaz-Infante was born in Salinas, CA, in 1968, and little is known about his younger years. He earned a bachelor of arts from the University of California in Santa Barbara in 1994 and an M.A. in music composition from CalArts in 1996. His first chamber works date from 1992 but have gone unrecorded except for a percussion solo interpreted by Gustavo Aguilar on Looking for Aztlan. His student years saw him concentrate on contemporary classical music. From 1996 to 1998, he was selected for eight artist residencies, starting with a composer residency at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale in Nice (France), followed by stays on the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast. Over the course of these years, he continued to compose, but also developed his improvisational side. Diaz-Infante appeared on a collaborative work with David Dvorin (Triptych, Pax Recordings), but his first album of importance was the 1997 piano solo CD Itz'at. It was...