Mark Izu (September 30, 1954 â January 12, 2025) was an American jazz double bass player and composer. He was of sansei (third-generation) Japanese ancestry and frequently combined jazz with Asian traditional musics (particularly the ancient Japanese court music known as gagaku) in his compositions. He performed with Anthony Brown and Jon Jang. Izu was a seminal leader in the Asian American jazz movement. His compositions include works for symphony orchestra, film, theater, dance, and jazz. The principal curator of the original Asian American Jazz Festival held at the Asian Art Museum in San FranciscoâÂÂs Golden Gate Park for nearly two decades, he helped establish the genre. In addition to the double bass, he also played the Japanese shà  and Chinese sheng (both free-reed mouth organs).
Izu was born in Vallejo, California, on September 30, 1954. He grew up in Seattle, Washington and Sunnyvale, California. The second of three brothers, he studied music at San Francisco State University. He lived in San Francisco, California, with his wife, playwright and performer Brenda Wong Aoki, and son (Kai KÃÂne Aoki Izu).
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.
Izu died of colon cancer in San Francisco, on January 12, 2025, at the age of 70.