Plenty to see and hear at Bird & Beckett this weekend.
Open noon to six for browsing the books, and then, there’s music…

Friday the 28th, there’s a 6-8pm show (The Tony Johnson Quartet returns! – $20 cover charge), then an 8:30-10pm show (The Aaron Germain Quartet – $20 cover charge). Saturday at 7:30, we present the Unnamable Quartet ($25) — Marc Caparone, Dan Barrett, Jeff Hamilton and Benny Amón — playing the trad jazz that came out of New Orleans before the swing era. Sunday at 5 ($20 donation) is our monthly jam session. And Sunday at 8pm, it’s the Ryan Ancheta Quartet ($20), featuring bassist Marcus Shelby.

You can reserve seats for our shows.
Just call the shop at 415-586-3733 during store hours.
Pay at the door when you arrive.
Reservations are held only until the show starts.

Cash is king when attending the shows.
Venmo also accepted, but cash is quicker,
easier for us, and much appreciated.

Cover charges for adults typically range from $20-$30 depending on the size of the band and the distance the musicians have traveled to play for you. Usually, it’s $20 per adult.
$10 for teens and students; kids free and welcome.

Living on a minuscule income? Ten is enough from you. Five even.
Just ask! Pay what you can. We want everyone to have access to this music!
That goes for folks with mobility problems as well.

Donations to our nonprofit help make this work. A lot!
Many thanks to y’all for what you do in that regard!
Want to know how to donate? See the sidebar on this website’s homepage.

Jazz in the bookshop has been continuous on Friday evenings since late 2002, and we’re never gonna give it up–good craic, as our sound engineer Tom Misage’ll tell ya.

So get yourself down here and enjoy some jazz music and the company of friends old and new. Call one of those old or new friends & tell ’em to meet you at Bird & Beckett!

Win Garden, the excellent, sweet and comfortable Chinese restaurant down on Diamond Street around the corner from the shop (just past those guys with the shovels), is open ’til 8:15, so grab a bite to eat before or after the first show. Tekka House, the fab sushi/ramen joint across the street and down the block from Bird & Beckett is open noon to nine, so that’ll get it as well. And right next to Win Garden, is Manzoni, offering exquisite Northern Italian cuisine. Open 5-9pm, it’s where Manhal from the Higher Grounds coffee house hangs out after work. Oh, wait! It is work! Manhal operates both joints–Higher Grounds from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, then Manzoni from five to nine. When does that mad genius sleep, one wonders?

After the second show, you’ll have to content yourself with a beer at the formidably cheerful watering hole called Glen Park Station, down around the corner on Diamond Street towards the traffic light, just before the taqueria and the pizzeria.

Up that way just a little further, opposite the BART station (also known as Glen Park Station) is a fabulous Thai restaurant, One Waan. It opens at 5 and closes at 9, so time a meal there. You won’t regret it. It’s the neighborhood’s best kept secret, and arguably its best restaurant!

Besides all that grub… sometimes there’s music!

Saturday the 29th, Bird & Beckett’s 7:30-9:30 show features cornet player Marc Caperone driving up from the central coast and trombonist Dan Barrett driving down from Sacramento to co-lead the Unnamable Quartet, a trad jazz outfit with Jeff Hamilton on piano and Mikiya Matsuda on bass. ($25 for this one, to help the guys with their travel expense!) These are four seriously great, experienced musicians, deeply committed to the New Orleans roots of jazz, which is a creole music of great, easy complexity and joyful human dimension. Just the thing that our current popular culture might be accused of lacking; quite understandable with the seemingly dismal state of the world. Still, the world, the human condition, was always a place with vast, dark expanses. There was slavery, lynching, disrespect, exploitation, genocide, terrorism throughout the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries, seemingly inexplicable. It’s not a new thing. Yet, there is still and has always been art and culture, generosity and kindness. Turn your back on those at your psychological and spiritual peril. Come together, and celebrate with your artists, celebrate  your artists, celebrate what’s in your soul. It beats staying home! Sure it might cost you twenty bucks. Forty if you stop for a beer and a burrito on the way here. Worth it.

Sunday the 30th, at 5pm there’s a jam session hosted by the Vince Lateano Trio followed at 8pm by the Ryan Ancheta Quartet, with bassist Marcus Shelby adding star power in support of his mentee Ryan. That’s Marcus in the photo that leads off this post…

Ryan is a fabulous young trumpet player a bit swamped in his freshman year studies at UC Berkeley just now, so we’ll wait to call him a rising star when he switches, against any sane person’s better judgment, from engineering to music. But since he’s busily playing music anyway, we won’t worry about him much! Ask fellow trumpeter Sai Ray, a youngster still at RASOTA. Or trumpeter Skylar Tang, a local kid/rising star/undergraduate music student back east… They’ll tell ya!

Want to see your own kid add to the culture? Well, if they play jazz music, encourage them to come out for the 5pm jam session and to stay for Ryan’s quartet date with Marcus! $10 will be enough of a cover from a teen, and they can bring a can of soda pop. What we love about the youth is they understand the vain hope recycling can bring. Oh well!

Come together and learn from their indomitable assumption that there’s a future and that it can be glorious fun. Sure there is and sure it can be! Both at once! But we digress…

Back to the Ryan Ancheta Quartet… 8pm Sunday… Ryan has solid sender Greg Jacobs on piano and Ryan’s contemporary Miles Turk on drums. Sylvia Cuenca sez Miles is amazing. No one can question Sylvia’s authority on such a topic! Gonna be a good way to close out another amazing weekend at Bird & Beckett! Don’t miss it!

Here’s a little something you missed Sunday the 23rd…

 

Need some nature after all that culture? Get up early and walk in the canyon. It’s just a ten minute walk down Chenery Street from the bookshop. Once you’re past the playing fields and rec center, the trail starts to climb… It’s a beautiful spot.