Jon Jang and his Pan Asian Arkestra
1973
FRANCIS WONG'S EARLY POLITICAL ACTIVISM
Influenced by the broader civil rights and ethnic studies movements sweeping the nation, Francis Wong co-led an ethnic studies movement and student boycott supporting the 1975 teachers’ strike at his local high school. These early organizing experiences would later shape Wong’s fiery approach to music production, grounding his artistic practice in community-based activism and social consciousness for years to come.
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Francis Wong early in his element. Photo courtesy of the artist.
1981
FIRST ASIAN AMERICAN JAZZ FESTIVAL
Kearny Street Workshop launched the first Asian American Jazz Festival (AAJF), a presenting platform fostering solidarity and new music creation amongst progressive Asian American artists. Formative for soon-to-be AIR Co-Founders Jon Jang and Francis Wong, the festival represented a creative lab for innovation and community building that was later taken over in leadership by Mark Izu.
1982
The murder of Vincent Chin sparks national outrage and protest,
prompting the rollout of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition strengthening solidarity between Asian American and Black liberation struggles.
VINCENT CHIN MOVEMENT
& RAINBOW COALITION
1983
GREAT WALL
by Francis Wong
Francis Wong releases his first record, Great Wall. This early work marks the beginning of his compositional career.
1984
ARE YOU CHINESE OR
CHARLIE CHAN?
by Jon Jang
Jon Jang releases this evoking album in response to Vincent Chin’s killing, featuring 18 artists on the tracklist. Here you hear East Wind, a 15-minute opener that leaves listeners with a critical, reflective tone.
1985
Jang and Wong joined local protests against South African apartheid and police brutality in San Jose’s Melvin Truss case, reflecting a rising Asian American consciousness rooted in racial justice and global solidarity.
FREE SOUTH AFRICA &MELVIN TRUSS MOVEMENT
1987
FOUNDING OF ASIAN IMPROV RECORDS
In 1987, Francis Wong and Jon Jang founded Asian Improv Records, an upstart record label providing an innovative platform for Asian American and other BIPOC musicians to present integrative sounds of tradition and improvisation. Their first album release, The Ballad or the Bullet, paid tribute to Malcolm X and Thelonious Monk in a featured quartet with Black jazz legends Eddie Moore & James Lewis, capturing new forms of sonic experimentalism. More than a label, AIR became a progressive imprint and ongoing movement—amplifying solidarity, collaboration, and Asian American creative voices beyond record producing, concerts, and eventually, a national network of artists.
1986
The two artist-activists deepened their political engagement in the Japanese American Redress and Reparations movement and anti-Marcos protests through politically charged performances, where music became a vehicle for historical memory and justice. That same year, Mark Izu and Jon Jang released two final projects under the “Revolutions Per Minute” (RPM) label before it folded—prompting the search for a new recording platform.
JAPANESE INTERNMENT REDRESS PERFORMANCES
RPM LABEL GOES DEFUNCT
AIR NETWORK EXPANDS
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COLLABORATION WITH NEW ARTISTS
The AIR co-founders work with Genny Lim on Winter Place, an experimental theater piece with poetry and Bunraku puppets presented at the Hatley Martin Gallery in 1990.
1989
FIRST MAJOR PARTNERSHIP
AIR forms a pivotal partnership with Life on the Water, an experimental theater organization based in Fort Mason, San Francisco. With support and guidance from Joe Lambert, the 200-seat venue offered AIR essential resources for expanding their musical productions under fiscal sponsorship, which led to the first major grants (Zellerbach, NEA) supporting their nationally recognized project, SenseUs, with legendary drummer Max Roach. As investment increased, AIR worked hard to translate that support to innovative artists in the community creating works with local and national resonance.
AIR RELEASES FIRST CD: NEVER GIVE UP!
AIR GETS NATIONAL PRESS ATTENTION
FIRST CONCERT: Reparations Now!
AIR’s founding concert takes place at Upstairs at Eulipia in San Jose.
The concert was recorded two years later on CD.
Photo: Nic Paget-Clarke
AIR MOVES TO SF
Photo: Nic Paget-Clarke
Jon Jang moves to San Francisco for more funding opportunities, shortly followed by Wong, where AIR operations continued to run out of Jang’s apartment on Leavenworth & Sacramento.
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The co-founders distribute AIR records by hand to local record stores. Eventually, the digital revolution transformed recording practices and shifted the label to its first CD’s in 1989 with Never Give Up!
PRODUCTION STARTS
AIR produces Bamboo that Snaps Back for Fred Ho on another label.
Two nights at Eulipia mark the start of AIR’s event production.
Bamboo That Snaps Back
Wong and Jang at the 15th Anniversary of the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco Chinatown in 1987.
Read full article here
1988
GAINING MUSICAL MOMENTUM
Glenn Horiuchi, prolific taiko artist, pianist, and composer out of L.A., releases new music with AIR: Next Step and Issei Spirit.
Fred Houn releases Song for Manong.
PUBLIC PERFORMANCES
AT LOCAL VENUES
AIR co-produces a public performance of Fred Ho’s Songs for Manong with Alleluia Panis and Kulintang Arts (now KULARTS). This concert expands AIR’s relationship with community venues, leading to performances at Yoshi’s, Life on the Water, and the Asian Art Museum.
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Kulitang Arts in its early years collaborating with Fred Ho and the Asian American Art Ensemble to provide music for A Song for Manong (1988), a play about the forgotten life-world of early male migrant workers from the Philippines known as manong; kulintang was played prominently by Kalanduyan. Photo by Kingmond Young.
1968: Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators at San Francisco State University calling for higher ed to include more ethnic studies and minority admissions. Photo from NPR.
1990
s
1990
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR Sense Us!
A groundbreaking collaboration of poetry, jazz, and political resistance gets AIR international recognition for this major project made in partnership with Executive Director of Life on the Water, Joe Lambert. The piece challenged notions of a singular national anthem—could one song really represent all Americans? The title, playing on the 1990 Census, urged audiences to “sense the United States” as inclusive of all communities, not just white America. The core ensemble featured music by Max Roach, Jon Jang, and John Santos, alongside poetry by Sonia Sanchez, Genny Lim, and Victor Hernández Cruz, performed to an audience of 6,000 at Davies Symphony Hall.
1990: Anthony Brown, Genny Lim, and Jon Jang in rehearsal for Sense Us!. Photo by Eddie Wong.
1990
Hundreds of unpaid artists call the City to address its detrimental pull of funding from Festival 2000, leading to the eventual creation of the Cultural Equity Endowment supported by Supervisor Terrence Hallanan.
BIPOC ARTIST COALITION RESPONDS TO SF CITY HALL
1993
AIR NATION EXPANDS TO CHICAGO
AIR begins national expansion of the organization’s presence beyond the Bay Area and building cross-regional alliances with artists in Chicago operating in similar circles.
Wong’s career as a composer and bandleader begin to take off, leaving administrative duties for AIR spread thin. Upon his wife Yumi's urge to reconnect with Chicago-based musician and filmmaker Tatsu Aoki, Francis reaches out to the seeking artist whose self-releasing record label “Innocent Eyes and Lenses” merges seamlessly with AIR, eventually leading to the creation of a cross-national organization. In 1994, the two collaborate on a project, Chicago Time Code, while Jon Jang brings AIR's political and artistic reach to the Windy City with his performance of Tiananmen, marking the beginning of a new chapter of AIR Midwest.
Genny Lim performs in "Sense Us!" for Festival 2000, October 1990.
Photo by Bob Hsiang.
Boom of the San Francisco Blues Festival. Sept. 15, 1990
Photo of Albert Collins by Deanne Fitzmaurice/The Chronicle.
1997
AIR MIDWEST IS FOUNDED
Tatsu Aoki founds AIR Midwest with support from AIR. The branch expands AIR’s national and regional infrastructure.
As AIR’s community-based programs grow with support from national grants, Tatsu Aoki takes over administrative leadership of AIR Midwest as Wong shifts into consulting and teaching.
2000
s
Does one anthem represent all of us?
LAUNCH OF ASIAN AMERICAN JAZZ PLAYERS SERIES
1995
Asian Improv aRts participates in its first Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival, which led to the start of a multi-disciplinary festival created by AIR called APA Arts & Heritage Festival. Tatsu Aoki attends his first AAJZ and starts the Asian American Jazz Players Series, which evolves into the Asian American Jazz Festival.
Jon Jang Jon & frequent collaborator flutist-composer James Newton.
Photo by Nic Paget-Clarke.
Beijing Trio: Jon Jang, Max Roach, Jiebing Chen, performing around the world from 1998 - 2001. Photo courtesy of Jon Jang.
2000
ALLIANCE OF EMERGING CREATIVE ARTISTS
Under AIR fiscal sponsorship, the Alliance of Emerging Creative Artists (AECA) was founded by Leon Lee and Jeff Chan to raise the profile of Asian American and ethnically diverse creative musicians producing professional performances across the Bay Area’s vibrant music scene.
The Alliance of Emerging Creative Artists (AECA) worked to produce concerts, secure grants, do marketing, budgeting, booking, and contracting professional opportunities for Asian American and ethnically diverse musicians ready to showcase their emerging sounds. Some of the featured leading figures included Fred Anderson, Oluyemi and Ijeoma Thomas, Jin Hi Kim, Alan Silva, Miya Masaoka, Hafez Modirzadeh, and Ben Goldberg, among others that presented a vision of a creative community that was self-evident in artistic and cultural diversity.
2000
WHEN SORROW TURNS TO JOY
by Jon Jang, James Newton, Genny Lim
Conceptualized during their residencies in Beijing and post-apartheid South Africa, Jang and Newton composed this work reflecting on the optimism of cross-cultural solidarity growing in artistic and political realms at the time. Together they blend jazz, classical, and operatic traditions to transcend cultural pluralities that give tribute to the legacies of African American singer/actor/humanitarian Paul Robeson and Chinese operatic star Mei Lanfang, two artists that inspired this work with their parallel expressions of tradition in music.
2007
AIR SPONSORS LENORA LEE DANCE
Lenora Lee Dance becomes fiscally sponsored by AIR and begins to make its impact locally and nationally through community & justice-driven choreographic works.
AIR expanded their work into interdisciplinary performance by becoming the fiscal sponsor for Lenora Lee Dance (LLD). Under Lenora Lee’s direction, LLD has developed groundbreaking multimedia and immersive dance works integrating movement, film, text, research, and music to address culture, history, and human rights. With AIR’s support, LLD grew into a nationally recognized company producing site-responsive performances, films, installations, and civic engagement projects—embodying the power of art as a vehicle for social change and extending AIR’s vision into new artistic frontiers.
CONVERGENT WAVES: NYC
WITHIN THESE WALLS
2025
2024
2017
2001
The aftermath of 9/11 deeply shook the nation and reinforced AIR’s DNA of activism in cultural policy. Collaborations with Iranian American musician and SFSU Professor Hafez Modirzadeh began as part of the ImprovisAsians Festival, strengthening solidarity across communities in a post-era of heightened racism & surveillance.
9/11 CULTURAL & POLITICAL
SHIFTS
2003
IMPROVISASIANS FESTIVAL LAUNCHES
A BRIDGE TO NOW /
UN PUENTE HACIA EL PRESENTE
2023
AIR FELLOWSHIP LAUNCHES
AIR established its first Fellowship Program, deepening their commitment to nurturing the next generation of BIPOC artists leading innovative, creative work in the community.
Rooted in values of community and collective care, the program provides fellows with generous stipends, one-on-one mentorship, grant writing support, professional development and production opportunities to help build sustainable careers as developing artists.
AIR Staff Lenora Lee, Vinay Patel, and Johnny Huy Nguyen with Genny Lim & 2023-24 AIR Fellows (L-R): Erika Oba, Katie Quan, Peekaboo, Shantré Pinkney, Lynn Huang, and Vida Kuang. Not pictured is Scott Oshiro, the 7th Fellow in the 2023-24 cohort.
AIRMW marks two decades with its annual Taiko Legacy concert at Chicago’s MCA, honoring Japanese musical traditions through powerful, community-rooted performance.
2024
AIR MIDWEST CELEBRATES 20 YEARS
Genny Lim and Johnny Huy Nguyen pictured after her inauguration as San Francisco's ninth Poet Laureate on September 6th, 2024.
Wong Wei's Legacy (2025): Francis Wong, William Roper, Deszon X. Claiborne, and Karl Evangelista perform an interdisciplinary work exploring three generations of the Wong family through war and flight as refugees in the latter half of the 20th Century.
2022
AIR CELEBRATES 35 YEARS
AIR celebrated 35 years of cross-cultural, interdisciplinary creation with two landmark programs of music, dance, and film that featured an intergenerational lineup of artists at the forefront of innovative AAPI arts and activism. Since 1987, AIR has produced over 100 recordings, mentored 3 generations of groundbreaking artists, and expanded its vital force for cultural equity and community-based art with a national reach that goes beyond Bay Area influence.
AIR grows its administrative capacity as it begins to shift towards narrative change and deepening artist support. From this point on, new members join the AIR Team; Francis Wong and Jon Jang continue to produce new work through major collaborations and partnerships; and the interdisciplinary range of AIR artists & commissioned work grows beyond its once musical beginnings.
Marking a new phase of campus collaboration with Dr. Hafez Modirzadeh at San Francisco State University, the ImprovisAsians Festival built solidarity amongst student groups through intergenerational programming linking music, activism, and academic discourse.
2010
2010
FRANCIS WONG:SHANGAI STORY
2014
JON JANG: TOISAN RAILWAY
AIR welcomes its second cohort of 2025/26 Fellows (L-R): amber julian, Diana Li, Tina Bartolome, Roopa Mahadevan, Truc Nguyen
AIR actively participates in the annual Chinatown Music Festival with Jon Jang's Ensemble as resident artist.
Photo courtesy of Chinatown Merchants Association.
2011-2017
Graphic & Web Design by Felicitas Fischer