About First Voice

Mission Statement: Founded in 1995, First Voice's mission is to create and develop the stories and music of people living between worlds. Critical to this mission is "personal experience" or "voice" as essential to authentic pan-world culture. First Voice creates, produces, and presents interdisciplinary work that interprets the pluralistic nature of the American experience from a unique Asian American cultural perspective. Through our pursuit of this distinctive purpose, First Voice has, over the years, played a central role in the evolution of the Bay Area’s Asian American arts community.

Description of Programming: First Voice was created to provide an organizational structure for the collaborations of Mark Izu and Brenda Wong Aoki, two prominent Asian American artists whose work since the 1970s has centered on creating contemporary American art by adapting non-Western theatrical, musical, and spoken word traditions. First Voice’s creative work is drawn from a number of different influences including our history of social, political, and cultural activism in San Francisco’s Japantown and Chinatown; our relationship to the Hapa (mixed-race) community; our traditional training in Noh, Kyogen, and Gagaku; and our lifelong dedication to working with artists whose hearts connect deeply with ours. Our annual Ghost Festival, presented at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, features our own original work as well as that of other artists working “at the crossroads,” mixing cultures, ethnicities, and media. Through the Ghost Festival, we pay tribute to ancestors while creating culture to be passed on to future generations. First Voice also continues to present our past work in repertory, at home in San Francisco and on tour in the U.S. and throughout the world. We have produced numerous spoken word and jazz recordings, and are at work on a publication imprint; our latest recording, Mermaid Meat, was released in 2005 in CD/book format and sold out its first printing.

Before officially incorporating as a non-profit, First Voice was the principal producer of the Asian American Jazz Festival (AAJF), which began in 1981 and became the oldest running jazz festival in San Francisco and the birthplace of Asian American creative music. Under the curatorial vision of Artistic Director Mark Izu, the AAJK presented such luminaries as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Zakir Hussain, Hiroshima , and Keiko Matsui, as well as local musicians/performers such as Pete Escovedo, Eddie Moore, Koichi Tamano, Jon Jang, DJ Qbert, Kulingtang Arts, San Francisco Taiko, Janice Mirikitani, Genny Lim, and the Asian American Orchestra.

Brenda Wong Aoki (Co-Artistic Director). Contemporary storyteller, Brenda Wong Aoki has deep roots in San Francisco . Her paternal grandfather was one of the first Japanese Christian priests in the country and a founder of San Francisco ’s Japantown in the 1890’s. Her maternal grandmother was president of the first Chinatown garment union in the 1920’s. A true American amalgam, Brenda is of Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Scots descent. She has received formal training in Noh and Kyogen, and performs solo or with live music – from small jazz ensembles to full symphony. She has received many awards and prizes for her work, including Dramalogue Awards, a Critics' Circle Award, two NEA fellowships, and a grant from Congress. Her writing has been published in Contemporary Plays by Women of Color and Extreme Exposure: Solo Voices of the 20th Century. Brenda’s recordings won the Indie Best Spoken Word Album of the year in 1990 and 1999; additionally, she serves as a governor on the Board of the National Association of Recording Artists, and is at the forefront of a movement to create a new Grammy category for storytelling. In 1996, Brenda received a U.S. Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce lifetime achievement award as the foremost Asian storyteller in America . She is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford and teaches and performs internationally.

Mark Izu (Co-Artistic Director). Mark Izu’s recent compositions include: Mermaid (1997), a monodrama scored for full symphony commissioned and conducted by Berkeley Symphony Maestro Kent Nagano; Last Dance (1998) a multimedia jazz and Taiko commemoration of Japanese American Internment during World War II commissioned by the US Congressional Civil Liberty Public Education Fund; and SunCycles (2000) performed by Circle of Fire, featuring tabla artist Zakir Hussain and master musician Togi Suenobu from Japan. Mark’s work has been greatly influenced by his study with Togi Suenobu; in great measure, Kuan-Yin (2002) is the fruit of a two-decade apprenticeship with this Gagaku master, known to Mark as Togi-Sensei. Mark’s film scores include Steven Okazaki ’s Academy Award-winning Days of Waiting and Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum Take Out. His theatre scores include Lawrence Yep’s Dragon Wings (performed at the Kennedy Center , Lincoln Center , and Sundance Festival) and Brenda Wong Aoki’s The Queen’s Garden (Dramalogue Award for Best Original Music and INDIES Award for best CD.) He has also been recognized with awards and commissions from Meet the Composer, the Asian Business League Artist Award, the NEA, and the ASCAP award for innovative composition. Mark served as founding faculty for Stanford University ’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts in 2002.

First Voice recieves funding from The San Francisco Foundation .

First Voice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization, Tax ID #94-3276737