Ernesto Diaz-Infante

Since the mid-1990s, Ernesto Diaz-Infante has ranked among the most productive avant-garde composers and improvisers active on the U.S. West Coast. Working on piano, prepared guitar, and electronics, he has written chamber pieces, improvised with dozens of musicians based in California, New York, and Chicago, and issued numerous CDs on small independent labels that include Pax Recordings, Sweetstuff Media, Zzaj Productions, and Public Eyesore. He also oversees the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, begun in 1999, and the creative music series at San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery, launched in 2000. Although his wide-ranging activities suggest an eclectic or maverick profile, the sustained focus and seriousness he brings to his work have earned him a modest yet devoted following.

Born in Salinas, CA, in 1968, Diaz-Infante has left scant information available about his formative years. He received a bachelor of arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1994 and an M.A. in music composition from CalArts in 1996. His earliest chamber works originated in 1992, yet only one—a percussion solo performed by Gustavo Aguilar—has appeared on record, as part of Looking for Aztlan. While a student he concentrated on contemporary classical music. From 1996 to 1998 he was awarded eight artist residencies, beginning with a composer residency at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale in Nice, France, and continuing with placements on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and on the West Coast. During those years he kept composing while simultaneously developing his improvisational practice.

Diaz-Infante took part in a joint release with David Dvorin, Triptych on Pax Recordings, though his first major album was the 1997 solo piano recording Itz’at. It was succeeded by the piano solo discs Tepeu in 1998, Ucross Journal in 1999, and Solus in 2000; the last of these inaugurated a sequence of piano suites built from short instant compositions fashioned as diary entries. Meanwhile he toured California in summer 1999 with the New York City free-form trio W.O.O. Revelator and formed a lasting association with guitarist Chris Forsyth. Subsequent collaborations ranged from the W.O.O. Revelator/Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Pat Harman Duo’s First Time, issued in 2000 on Sweetstuff, to paired recordings with Forsyth—Left & Right in 2000 and Wires & Wooden Boxes in 2001, both on Evolving Ear. In these projects and within the Left Coast Improv Group he performs chiefly on guitar. His 2000 release with Jeff Kaiser, Pith Balls and Inclined Planes, drew favorable critical notice.

Diaz-Infante established the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival in 1999, the largest of several events he has organized in Northern California. Moving to San Francisco in 2001, he exchanged the comparative quiet of his earlier locations—including the residencies—for more active surroundings. There he co-founded the San Francisco Alternative Music Festival and continued working with musicians such as Bob Marsh, Tom Nunn, Kyle Bruckmann, Damon Smith, and Philip Gelb.