Mark Izu

Mark Izu is a jazz double bassist who has brought together avant-garde jazz and traditional Japanese music. An American musician of Japanese origins, he was born in Vallejo, California, on September 30, 1954, and grew up between Seattle, Washington and Sunnyvale. After studying at San Francisco State University, he settled in San Francisco and married theater director Brenda Wong Aoki in 1991, with whom he recorded the album The Queen's Garden (1996). Earlier, on the 1992 album Circle of Fire, Mark Izu blends his spiritual aspirations and experimental jazz style with Japanese gagaku and other Asian musical traditions, while Last Dance (1998) veers towards vocal or instrumental jazz improvised with orchestra. In 2007, the double bassist returned to his fusion of genres on Threading Time, before teaming up with Christopher Yohmei Blasdel on the album Navarasa: Duets for Shakuhachi and Contrabass (2010), playing double bass and traditional Japanese instruments such as the sheng and shō. In addition, Mark Izu has composed for theater, film and symphony orchestra, and for two decades curated the Asian American Jazz Festival, based in San Franciso's Golden State Park and affiliated with the Asian Arts Museum. His composition for the documentary Balinao 52 (2007) won him an Emmy Award. On January 12, 2025, Mark Izu died of colon cancer at the age of 70.

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