Asia Fajardo-Diamond is a Denver-based saxophonist, composer, and cultural arts administrator/educator. Her work reflects a rich multicultural perspective, with a focus on nature, individuality, and family heritage. She descends from a longstanding lineage of artists and musicians in the American Southwest, as well as Mexica (Aztec) dancers dedicated to preserving ancestral traditions.
Asia holds a Bachelor of Science in Music from the University of Colorado Denver and a Master of Music from the University of Wyoming, where she also served as a graduate teaching assistant for the saxophone studio. Her studies included saxophone, composition, and research in multicultural music education, with a focus on the work of Native American jazz artist Jim Pepper where she composed Desert Medicine as a was to encourage students to utilize their family hertiage to inspire their compositions.
Her recent project, Hummingbird’s Grandchildren, is a collection of compositions for children inspired by her late great-grandmother, Esther Lopez Dussart Fajardo of Denver’s historic Five Points neighborhood. The album honors her ancestors’ legacy of cultural heritage, resilience, and compassion, with themes of caring for the Earth, creativity, movement, and community.
Asia was a Wyoming Festival Performing Artists-in-Residence in 2024, where her compositionWhite Eagle was performed. Asia is the composer and producer of the avant-garde stage work Omecihaul Rising (2010, Aurora Fox Theater) Omecihuatl represents the unity of masculine and feminine energies within a single archetype, symbolizing divine wholeness. Omecihuatl Rising is an interdisciplinary work by Asia that blends Indigenous and Western traditions through music, dance, and visual art while exploring the Divine Feminine. Her music appears in the documentaries Return of the Corn Mothers and Papers. She has performed at venues and events across Colorado, including Dazzle, KUVO Jazz Radio, the Five Points Jazz Festival, and the Denver Botanic Gardens. She has played in Asia Jazz Project, Mono Verde, Pink Hawks, and Molina Speaks.
Raised in a diverse artistic community in Denver, Asia draws from global musical traditions and her Mexica heritage as a traditional Aztec dancer. Also known as Xochiquetzal (“beautiful flower”), she views music as a force for healing, connection, and transformation, striving to create work that inspires growth, love, and cultural awareness.