The Quest

This is a sample of a new composition I am working on for a theatrical dance piece called "Mu," about an underwater sea kingdom, which will premiere in San Francisco in Fall 2013. For more information, visit: http://www.aokizu.com/performances/mu-in-production/

MU Journey to Bottom of Sea

01 Procession Kuan Yin

Mary's Song CD Version

This is a track from "Last Dance",  a multi-disciplinary work created by Mark Izu. "Last Dance happened over time. Maybe a seed for the project was planted as I worked at the Japanese Senior Center in the '70s. Or when as a college student, I interviewed the only Nisei musician I knew, George Yoshida. Later, in 1988, he and I started a swing band of nisei and sansei musicians, the J-Town Jazz Ensemble. The project idea took shape when in 1995, I collaborated with poet Janice Mirikitani at a Day of Remembrance event. It seems only natural to bring artists and performers Brenda Wong Aoki, Anthony Brown and San Jose Taiko, whom I've worked with for much of my musical career, all together on this project. My parents, like many others, did not speak about their internment. I learned about it outside of my home. Some stories, despite the pain of the memory and telling, leap out and are too important to be forgotten. Through music and personal story, I hope that the lessons learned from this critical segment of history will be remembered, so that we can recognize and prevent prejudice and intolerance to ensure a just future for all in our global community."
MARK IZU's (Composer, Bass, Sho & Sheng) award-winning musical compositions are an amalgam of ancient Asian traditions fired in smooth jazz. A pioneer in this genre, Izu is known for his seamless mastery of cross-cultural instrumentation and incredible agility in many disciplines.

Kiryoku

Love (Sringaram)

Mermaid Prelude BSO Excerpt

Navarasa is a CD featuring the ground-breaking sounds of award-winning Asian Jazz composer Mark Izu playing contra bass, sheng and sho, and Christopher Yohmei Blasdel playing shakuhachi. The music is mostly improvised, based on the various rasa themes.

Japanese music has roots in India, so the artists decided to pay homage to the beginnings by using the concept of the navarasa for inspiration.

The Visage of Shiva (fear prelude)

San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Mark Izu fuses the music of Asia with African-American improvisation. A third generation Japanese-American, Izu has performed with such influential jazz musicians as Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, James Newton and Karl Berger as well as with his own groups, J-Town Jazz Ensemble, featuring Anthony Brown and Jon Jang, and, the Mark Izu Bass Quartet with Lisle Ellis. Izu's 1991 album, Circle Of Fire, was a critics choice in the East Bay Guardian. Izu's compositions include a live score for Sesue Hayakawa's 1919 film, Dragon Painter, and the scores of movies including Wayne Wang's Dim Sum Take Out, Greg Chapnick and Sharon Wood's documentary, Outside In Sight: The Music Of The United Front, and Steven Okazaki's Academy Award-winning film Days Of Waiting. 

Izu received a Dramalogue award for "Best original music" for his score for his wife, Brenda Wong Aoki's, The Queen's Garden. Izu was commissioned by Asian Improv aRts to compose and perform a piece, "Hibakusha, Survivors!" with an ensemble featuring western and eastern instruments. Izu has studied sho, the Japanese equivelent to the Chinese sheng (multi-reed organ), and performed with Japanese Imperial Court master musician Suenobu Togi since 1976. During the 1986 west coast premier of Somei Sato's musical production, Journey Through Sacred Time, at the Cabrillo Music Festival, Izu was the featured sho player. A graduate of San Francisco State University, Izu began playing with alto saxophonist Lewis Jordan while still a student. The two musicians became regular performers at the famed Blue Dolphin Club. Joined by trumpet player George Sams and drummer Anthony Brown, they formed a band, United Front, which performed annually at European jazz festivals throughout the 1980s. The group recorded five albums between 1979 and 1990. For over twenty years, Izu served as artistic director of the Asian-American Jazz Festival in San Francisco. Mark Izu received a Northern California Regional EMMY® Award for outstanding Musical Composition/Arrangement for his score for 'Bolinao 52, a film about the Vietnamese Boat People which also received an EMMY Award for Outstanding Documentary.  ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide

Mark Izu

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