Mark Izu
Mark Izu (born 1954 ) is an American jazz musician (bass, mouth organs ) and film composer.
Life and work
Izu is of Japanese-Americans in the third generation and has been working since the 1970s in the music scene of the Asian American jazz movement in San Francisco. From the 1970s he busied himself with the game of Shō and entered 1976 with Japanese musician Suenobu Togi. He graduated from San Francisco State University; During his studies he played with saxophonist Lewis Jordan Blue Dolphin Club. With trumpeter George Sams and drummer Anthony Brown, they formed the United Front formation, which has appeared in the 1980s on European jazz festivals. The group recorded 1979-1990 on five albums. From 1989 Izu worked as artistic director of the Asian-American Jazz Festival in San Francisco. With Zakir Hussain, he produced in 1996 for the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the program The New Silk Road.
During his career he played among others with Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, James Newton and Karl Berger; He also worked with his own bands such as the J- Town Jazz Ensemble with Anthony Brown and Jon Jang and the Mark Izu Bass Quartet with Lisle Ellis. In 1991 he released his debut album Circle of Fire (Asian Improv ). In the field of jazz Izu worked 1979-2010 at 28 recording sessions; while he was playing except the bass and Sheng, Shō, mouth organ and Namwu.
As a composer he wrote, inter alia, the soundtrack live to the listed Sessue Hayakawa silent film The Dragon Painter (1919), and also the music for films such as Wayne Wang's Dim Sum Take Out (1988 ) and Steven Okazaki's film Days of Waiting (1990 ). In Alan Parker's melodrama Come See the Paradise ( 1990), he took part as performers.
Disco Graphical Notes
- United Front - Ohm: Unit of Resistance (RPM, 1981)
- Last Dance (2002)
- Mermaid Meat (2007)
- Threading Time ( 2007)
- Dragon Painter (2007)
- Legend of Morning Glory (2010)
- Navarasa: Duets for shakuhachi & Contra Bass (2010)