10 Facts About Francis Wong

Francis Wong is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, and erhu player.

Francis Wong specializes in the fusion of free jazz and Asian musics, and is a central member in the Asian American jazz movement.

Francis Wong has worked with Glenn Horiuchi, Jon Jang, John Tchicai, James Newton, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Brown, and Liu Qi-Chao.

Central to Francis Wong's oeuvre is the intercultural cast of his music.

Part of Francis Wong's leaning toward intercultural explorations derives in part from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music's idea of improvisation as a means for cross-cultural communication in developing one's music.

Francis Wong remains committed to community work; he served as resident artist at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and in Japantown, providing technical assistance to a local taiko drumming group, and teaching music classes and organizing concerts for young students.

Francis Wong's activities include strategic planning, meeting facilitation, grant writing, communications, operations, project management, and human resources.

Francis Wong was the former Co-Director of the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

Francis Wong taught jazz saxophone and jazz ensembles at San Francisco State University, where one of his students was the Mescalero Apache jazz composer and bassist John-Carlos Perea.

Francis Wong taught a course entitled "Aspects of Asian American Culture" at the UC-Santa Cruz.