Francis Wong (Chinese: 王世明; pinyin: Wáng Shìmíng) is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, and erhu player.
[1] He has worked with Glenn Horiuchi, Jon Jang, John Tchicai, James Newton, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Brown, and Liu Qi-Chao.
The self-defining and uplifting qualities expressed in the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and later Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman shaped him as a performer and composer.
[4] Wong’s albums, Pachinko Dreamtrack 10 with Glenn Horiuchi and Joseph Jarman (1999) and Mo’ Betta Butta with William Roper and Bobby Bradford (2008) represent his interracial and intercultural partnerships, as does the collaborative performance of “4X4,” featuring Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quartet meets Francis Wong Special Edition Quartet on May 23, 2012 at the Hall of Culture, African American Arts and Culture Complex.
The intercultural mix of Wong’s “Persistence of Vision Project” combined the talents of Tatsu Aoki, Elliott Humberto Kavee, Jon Jang, John Carlos Perea, and Hafez Modirzadeh with poets Lawson Fusao Inada and Genny Lim.
The community group Kalian Collective joined forces with Asian American gallery artists, poets, dancers, muralists, politicos, college students and Filipino tenants who set up operations in the hotel to save it from urban renewal.
“Diaspora Tales #2: 1969” performed in April 2010 is an interdisciplinary piece featuring music by the Francis Wong Unit, spoken word by A.K.
Through their efforts to integrate Chinese music into jazz, under the auspices of the California Arts Council, the two exercised true citizenship by drawing on their musicianship to enrich the community.
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.
His activities include strategic planning, meeting facilitation, grant writing, communications, operations, project management, and human resources.
[6][7] For nearly three decades, he was affiliated with Kularts (1991-2020),[8] a San Francisco-based organization promoting traditional and contemporary Filipino arts, first as manager and later as a long-time Board President.