A San Francisco-based musician known for producing Asian American influenced jazz tunes and fusing them with dance, film and theater is dead at 70.

Mark Izu served as artistic director of the Asian American Jazz Festival from its launch in 1981 until 2000.

The Violin Channel reports he died of colon cancer. Izu joined a group of Asian American musicians that included saxophonist Francis Wong, percussionist Anthony Brown and Jon Jang on piano.

“Mark was a visionary artist,” Jang told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He was trying to redefine Asian America.”

He is survived by his wife, Brenda Wong Aoki, a dancer, playwright and actress, along with his son, Kai Kane Aoki Izu, his granddaughter Lucy and brothers David and Thomas.

“I really miss holding his hand, his really nice, big warm hand. That was my favorite thing, it was that we would hold hands,” Wong Aoki said to Nichi Bei News. “I don’t know how to perform anymore because I would always kiss him before I would go on stage.”

Izu spent his early years in Seattle and Sunnyvale, CA after being born in Vallejo, CA. He is part of a group of musicians that blended Asian music and traditions with post-bop jazz practices.

His final work was a family affair with wife Wong Aoki and son Kai for Soul of the City in 2024. Aoki describes it as spoken word, jazz oratorio with dance and film that tells the story of the family’s 127-year history in San Francisco’s Japantown, Chinatown and Fillmore districts.

 “The work is about turning trauma and racism into resilience and triumphant by telling our stories (because) we’re still here,” Aoki said to the Chronicle.

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