Diego Alfonso (Mexico–Cuba, 1996) is a percussionist, composer, sound artist, and artistic researcher whose work redefines percussion as an embodied, ecological, and deeply physical practice. Moving fluidly between concert performance and experimental sound art, he explores the intersection of Deep Listening, performance, and interdisciplinary percussion through electronics, prehispanic instruments, and archival sound.
His practice is rooted in the materiality of soundwhere resonance, metal, skin, and gesture become sites of exploration and transformation. Through an expanded approach to percussion, he creates immersive sonic environments that challenge conventional boundaries between instrument, performer, and space. He performs using Soultone Cymbals and is proudly sponsored by Overtone Percussion, a Mexican brand dedicated to percussion instruments and mallets.
He graduated with Honors from the School of Music at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and began his graduate studies in 2026 in the Master’s Program in Musical Creation, New Technologies, and Traditional Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In 2025, he performed internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral percussionist at festivals including FEMUSC (Brazil), Mostly Modern Festival (New York, USA), and SoundSCAPE Festival (Switzerland). That same year, he collaborated on the debut album of FaB5, a New York–based ensemble for string quartet and percussion.
Through his solo project Yo la llamo música (“I Call It Music”), he develops immersive works that present extended percussion, electronics, and sound archives, engaging oral memory, community knowledge, and ecological perspectives. His work positions listening as an act of attention, care, and transformation.