Summer Drum and Percussion Festival - Javier Diaz

Javier Diaz is a percussionist with the American Symphony Orchestra and with several chamber music groups and Latin music groups in the New York Area. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York Perspectives Ensemble, Zankel Hall New Music Band, and Hilliard Ensemble. He has performed for Broadway's productions of Man of La Mancha, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Brooklyn, Phil Collins’s Tarzan, Guys and Dolls, The Wiz, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Rocky, In The Heights, The Lion King, and Gloria Estefan’s On Your Feet. His studio/film soundtrack credits include collaborations with jazz greats David Sanborn and Marcus Miller, ECM's Tituli by Stephen Hartke with the Hilliard Ensemble, Barbershop 3, several HBO films and many TV and radio commercials. 

As an Afro-Cuban percussion specialist Diaz has appeared with: Miami Sound Machine, David Sanborn, Marcus Miller, Sean Kingston, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Shaka Kan, Patty LaBelle, Lazaro Galarraga's Afro-Cuban All Stars, percussionists Angel Luis Figueroa, Candido Camero, Román Diaz and Pedro Martinez, The Panamerican Jazz Band, The Ethnix, AnetteAguilar’s Latin Jazz Group, Marta Topferova, Edmar Castañeda, Tribal Sage, and the New York World Music Institute. In addition, Diaz’s has released an album with world music band Kalunga.

An active educator, Diaz has taught classical percussion at El Sistema de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, University of Connecticut and at his private studio in New York City.  He has also taught Afro-Cuban percussion seminars, classes and clinics at the Peabody Institute, University of Southern California, Percussion Artists Workshops Los Angeles/New York, Los Angeles School District, The Juilliard School, the Boston Conservatory, and Mannes School of Music in New York City. Diaz is currently on the percussion faculties at Rutgers University, the Juilliard School, and Queens College. He has a book on Afro-Cuban percussion called The Afro-Cuban Handbook. 

Diaz has composed music for the Aspen Music Festival, New York University, and University of Southern California. His concert music is available through Bachovich Music. 

An alumnus of El Sistema de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela and the Aspen Music Festival, Diaz holds a BM from the University of Southern California and a MM from The Juilliard School.