The San Francisco Sextet plays the classic hard bop repertoire of the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, Sonny Clark, and Hank Mobley, and many more; as well as beautiful ballads and blues.

Erik Jekabson, trumpet
John Gove, trombone
Charlie McCarthy, saxophone
Benny Watson, piano
Jeff Saxton, bass
Greg Gotelli, drums

$25 cover charge; byob

Drummer Greg Gotelli fields numerous great bands in the Bay Area, from the SF Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston to the Buena Vista Jazz Band with clarinetist Don Neeley to vocalist Lorretta Gooden’s Hammond B3 combo. Many of the great veterans of Bay Area jazz have found a berth with Greg’s groups, including Noel Jewkes, Si Perkoff, Al Obidinski, Frank Jackson, Duncan James, Glen Pearson, Chuck Bennett, Denise Perrier, Mike Greensill, Marty Eggers, John Hunt, Andrew Storar, John Clark and a host of others. A modest but dapper guy keeping good time at the kit, Greg is a regular Medici of the Bay Area jazz scene.

Trombonist John Gove, Director of Jazz Studies at Laney College, is the winner of two Downbeat awards for composition and arranging, and has performed and/or recorded with Terence Blanchard, the Mingus Dynasty, Maria Schneider, Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Dr. John, Peter Gabriel, Huey Lewis and Smashmouth. His arrangements have been commissioned and performed by such artists as Ledisi with the Count Basie Orchestra and the SF Jazz All Stars.

Trumpeter Erik Jekabson is a consummate player, arranger and bandleader, as well as an esteemed educator. Born in Berkeley, he got his B.Mus. at Oberlin, toured in Japan, spent four years in the late 1990s in New Orleans (playing with Kermit Ruffins, Eddy Louiss and Galactic) and worked in New York with the Illinois Jacquet Big Band before the decade was over. He gained a Masters degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the mid-aughts, created the 17-piece Electric Squeezebox Orchestra in 2013, and keeps on ticking – leading small combos and playing just about everywhere.

Saxophonist Charlie McCarthy is a simply superb section player, soloist and arranger with decades of high level work in studios, bandstands and concert stages. His fluidity and instantly recognizable voice on the tenor sax is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of countless jazz aficionados. Charlie did stints on the road with Grease, The Beach Boys and Van Morrison before landing a gig with Lena Horne. From there he went on to work with Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Henderson, Sarah Vaughan, Bobbie Hutcherson, George Shearing, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson and Joe Williams, not to mention countless players dear to San Franciscans’ hearts including Vince Lateano, Al Plank, Madeline Eastman, Tony Johnson, Bruce Forman, Dee Bell and Dean Reilly.

Bassist Jeff Saxton is another of those key guys making it work for jazz musicians in the Bay Area, having collaborated with saxophonist Andrew Speight on Speight’s greatly prized backyard (Jeff’s backyard, that is) pandemic livestreamed bop conclaves. He’s out the gate now as a dedicated, skilled and solid rhythm section player, turning up on gigs all over the region.

As for pianist Benny Watson, he’s been at the keys in the Northern California bars, restaurants, hotels, jazz clubs and concert halls since the early 1960s, a journeyman in a profession that has had a long and storied place in Bay Area cultural and labor history.

To pick a single point in time, 1973 found Benny working in rotation at the St. Francis Hotel with such local lions of the piano as Al Plank, Bob Franks, Bill Keck, Ken Muir, Kent Strand, Larry Dunlap, Michael Udelson, Mike Greensill, Michael Parsons and Gini Wilson. This was on the off nights of Abe Battat’s trio with Seward McCain and John Stafford, which played six nights a week. So many great musicians played at the St. Francis during that run, including Jeff Neighbor, John Mosher, Mario Suraci, Dean Reilly, John Witalla, Ruth Davies, John Nichols, John Moore, George McNeill, David Schoenbrun, Pat Klobas, Ray Loeckle, Stan Shuman, Howie Dudune, Al Walcott, Jon Eriksen, Vince Lateano, Jim Zimmerman, Maye Cavallaro, and Madeline Eastman, many of whom have played at Bird & Beckett over the past twenty five years.

Benny’s cd Jazzland Recreation, from 1993, with Seward McCain and David Rokeach is a rare gem.