World Premiere Of Mark Izu's "songs For J-town" at Presidio Theatre

The Presidio Theatre in San Francisco presents the world premiere of Emmy Award-winning jazz innovator, composer and performer Mark Izu's Songs for J-Town in one concert only. Songs for J-Town is a Japanese American Jazz concert dedicated to the artists' and communities' grandchildren's children and the ancestors who carry them. Mark Izu (Contrabass and Sho) with Mas Koga (Shakuhachi, Flutes and Saxophone), Jimi Nakagawa (Taiko and Traps), Jim Norton (Woodwinds), Caroline Cabading (Vocals), devorah major (Spoken Word), Sara Sithi-Amnuai (Trumpet and Sheung), Karl Evangelista (guitar) and Brenda Wong Aoki (Storyteller). Shinto Blessing by Rev. Mas Kawahatsu, digital collage by Andrea Wong, film by Tonilyn Sideco....

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The Presidio Theatre in San Francisco presents the world premiere of Emmy Award-winning jazz innovator, composer and performer Mark Izu's Songs for J-Town in one concert only. Songs for J-Town is a Japanese American Jazz concert dedicated to the artists' and communities' grandchildren's children and the ancestors who carry them. Mark Izu (Contrabass and Sho) with Mas Koga (Shakuhachi, Flutes and Saxophone), Jimi Nakagawa (Taiko and Traps), Jim Norton (Woodwinds), Caroline Cabading (Vocals), devorah major (Spoken Word), Sara Sithi-Amnuai (Trumpet and Sheung), Karl Evangelista (guitar) and Brenda Wong Aoki (Storyteller). Shinto Blessing by Rev. Mas Kawahatsu, digital collage by Andrea Wong, film by Tonilyn Sideco.

Songs for J-Town is a concert featuring music from the history of San Francisco's Japantown, beginning with the story of the Sun Goddess by Brenda Wong Aoki and a blessing by Konko Priest Mas Kawahatsu to sanctify the space, exorcise the historical ghosts of anti-Japanese propaganda and begin healing from what the military did to Japanese Americans during the Incarceration and to the Japanese people in the 1940's during WWII. The concert centers on an instrumental jazz performance infused with Gagaku, a 1500-year-old ceremonial Japanese music honoring the Sun Goddess, that Izu studied for 26 years under his mentor Togi Suenobu.

The concert also features songs that bring back the swing and big band tunes that were popular with Japanese American political prisoners in internment camps after they were forcibly removed from their homes in Japantown during the height of anti-Asian hysteria in the 1940s.

There will be resistance songs that call back to the Japantown of the 1970s, the birthplace of Asian American Jazz, a genre which Mark Izu helped pioneer during the struggle by Black and Japanese residents to fight the forced evictions of tens of thousands of neighborhood residents during waves of demolition led by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

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Website: https://go.evvnt.com/1054658-2?pid=4485

Time: 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm

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