"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. 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."--François Couture, All Music Guide

In 1997, San Francisco composer/guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante began the Pax Recordings record label which is dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and contagion of music from the margins of our culture and psyches. In 2003, filmmaker Marjorie Sturm joined him in running Pax Recordings.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante has released over eighty recordings on his own and others’ labels such as Ramble Records, scatterArchive, Muteant Sounds, The Jewel Garden, Tape Drift Records, Loma Editions, Headlights Recordings, Ruralfaune, Erototox Decodings, Public Eyesore Records, Zzaj Productions, and Kendra Steiner Editions.

His musical compositions span a broad perspective: transcendental piano, noise, free improvisation, avant-garde guitar, field recordings, lo-fi four-track manipulations, and experimental song.

Diaz-Infante has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and his music continues to be broadcasted internationally. 

ED-I collaborates with boundary-pushing artists--recording or performing with Helena Espvall, Bryan Day, The Man from Atlantis, Michel Kristof, Marcio Gibson, Lisa Cameron, Lee Dockery, Chris Forsyth, Lars Scherzberg, Jeff Arnal, Blaise Siwula, Anita DeChellis, Dan DeChellis, 99 Hooker, Bonnie Kane, Philip Gayle, Bob Marsh, Rent Romus, The Abstractions, Moe Staiano, Rotten Piece, Fever Spoon, Marcos Fernandes, Robert Montoya, Matt Davignon, Dave Tucker, Matt Hannifin, William Fowler Collins, Anderw Östberg, Rotcod Zzaj, Mark Flake, J Mundok, Pablo St. Chaos, André Custodio, Lx Rudis, Kyle Bruckmann, John Shiurba, Karen Stackpole, David Dvorin, Jeff Kaiser, Ernesto Rodrigues, Manuel Mota, Gino Robair, Chuck Roth and family members Marjorie Sturm, Ezra Sturm.

Born in Salinas, California, Ernesto Diaz-Infante is Chicano (Mexican ancestry). He received his BA from the College of Creative Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara and his MFA in Music Composition from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Stephen L. Mosko and Wadada Leo Smith. 

Diaz-Infante co-founded the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival (1999-2004) and the San Francisco Alternative Music Festival (2000-2003).

Ernesto Diaz-Infante composed the music for filmmaker Marjorie Sturm’s The Cult of JT LeRoy and many of her other works. They live in San Francisco with their son and daughter.

"He makes a dangerous playmate" --The Wire

"A composer and performer with an instinctive way of creating sound paintings" --Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times

"Ernesto is by now to be considered one of the most attentive, ear-opening, brain-splitting creatives in the new music scene" --Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes.