We’re closed Mondays, and reopen for the week Tuesday at noon, selling books & doing the usual. Noon to six, Tuesday to Sunday are the regular store hours. We’re here late several days each week, presenting events. This week, on Wednesday we begin a five-day run of literary and jazz events in the evenings — three book/literary events and four jazz dates. Detail follows, but here’s the short version:

9/17, 5:15pm: Too Much Love, Stories of Mothering. A reading.
9/17, 7pm: Compassion Guy – a memoir-in-progress reading by Maria Breaux.
9/18, 7:30pm: Walker Talks, a live stream – Walker Brents III on Alan Watts.
9/19, 6pm: The Scott Foster Trio with Noel Jewkes & Sam Bevan.
$20 adults; $10 students; kids free.
9/19, 8:30pm: The Joel Behrman/Jesse Levit Quintet. $25/$10.
9/20, 7:30pm: The Harvey Wainapel Quartet. $20/$10.
9/21, 5pm: The Vince Lateano Trio. $20/$10/free.

Just checking out the music? Pay if you decide to stay for the show — that’s how we get the lion’s share of the money we need to pay the musicians a guaranteed wage for their work (they only call it “playing”). Typically, the cover charge is $20 for trios and quartets or $25 for quintets. Bring cash! Kids are always welcome and free. Dogs pay double and are better left at home, though trained service dogs are ok. Call for a reservation, 415-586-3733; seats are held until the show starts. Wheelchair accessible. BYOB.

Here’s the detail:

Wednesday, September 17th – 5pm: Too Much Love: Stories of Mothering — short readings from the new anthology edited by Nitza Agam. Doors open at 5:15 for the reading, which starts at 5:30. Free. Donations welcome.
— Abby Caplin: Chipped; Madame Le Brun and Her Daughter; Med School Interview, 1975.
— Flo Oy Wong: This Immigrant Woman, My Mama; The Felicia Chair; In a Black Bowl.
— Chana Jacobs: Jersey Beach.
— Bonnie Lindauer: A Mother’s Confession.
— Kathleen Meadows: Tracing Your Starshine; For the Love of Music.
— Cynthia Chin-Lee: Report Cards; Super Power; Love Metamorphosis.
— Carole DeNola: A True Opera Devotee.
— Nitza Agam: Once You Were in my Belly.
— Elizabeth Cohen Tribute: Rakefet.

Wednesday, September 17th – 7pm: Compassion Guy, a memoir-in-progress by Maria Breaux. Maria, the sister of David Henry Breaux, will read from her manuscript and join in conversation with UC Berkeley English professor Scott Saul about their family and David’s murder in April 2023. In 2016, David sent Maria this message: “If I’m ever harmed and unable to speak for myself, forgive the perpetrator and help others forgive that person.” Supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Read more about David here.

Thursday, September 18th – 7:30pm: Walker Talks — a livestream: Walker Brents explores the thought and writings of Alan Watts. Find Walker’s talk on our YouTube channel or Facebook page, or in the video window at the top of this webpage. Walker is a great storyteller and a brilliant intellect, and has given a monthly talk on diverse topics in mythology, literature, religion and philosophy at Bird & Beckett for two decades. Feel free to come in and claim a chair, or take it in from our livestream. Alan Watts, language artist. Whose fluent and thoughtful approach to religion and cosmology continues to give real encouragement to the spiritual seekers of today. His stylistic forebears include Shakespeare, Epicurus, assorted crazy Zen mountain men, Lao-Tzu and Aldous Huxley. He has already been accorded his own place in the history of the 1960s, along with Timothy Leary and others. What is ultimately mysterious is his uncanny skill with common speech. In conversational prose he bridged the profane and the sublime. It takes a pioneering spirit to do this. He is a writer’s writer who takes the universal and makes it particular to a common point of view. An unfathomably rich and generous mind.

Friday, September 19th – 6pm: The Scott Foster Trio featuring saxophonist Noel Jewkes and bassist Sam Bevan. $20 cover charge requested if you’re an adult here for the show! $10 for students, kids free. Just checking it out? Pay if you decide to stay. Cash please. Broke? Pay less. But pay what you can–that’s how we pay the musicians! That and with the help of donors to our nonprofit. Ask how you can become one of those!
          Multi-instrumentalist Noel Jewkes is among the rarefied elder giants on the West Coast, sticking close to home in the Bay Area with occasional forays to NYC. He’s been dubbed Dr. Legato for his flowing lines of improvisational genius and compositional craft. A treasure, for sure.
          Bassist Sam Bevan had a long sojourn in NYC but has been back home here for a couple of years. He’s one of the greats, no question–with a long career ahead.
          Guitarist Scott Foster has been on the gig here since the start of our regular weekly jazz programming in late 2002. That’s 24 years and counting. Bird & Beckett’s favorite guitarist, an East Bay native schooled at Berklee School of Music in Boston, he’s now Performing Arts Department Chair, Music Teacher and Jazz Band Director at San Francisco’s Urban School, teaches at Community Music Center, is a core member of B3B4 and an adjunct member of the Americano Social Club, Mean to Me and other great combos, and gigs as a sideman, duo partner and solo artist wherever and whenever he gets the call. You’ll find him in dozens of San Francisco venues, wherever fine jazz is purveyed. Don’t miss the chance to hear Scott leading a combo of his own devising on the third Friday of each month at Bird & Beckett. It’s always a treat, and the musicians he brings to the Bird & Beckett stage always have a lot to say and are among the most eloquent practitioners of America’s classical music.

Friday, September 19th – 8:30pm: The Joel Behrman/Jesse Levit Quintet, featuring Matt Clark, piano; Josh Thurston-Milgrom, bass; Jeff Marrs, drums. A fantastic quintet. Trust us on that! Fiery jazz like it’s supposed to be! Joel is on trumpet and Jesse is on reeds–great artists, both. $25 cover charge, cash please at the door. $10 for students. Kids should be home in bed, but if you’re keeping ’em out late, they’re admitted free. It’s all ages and wheelchair accessible at Bird & Beckett. BYOB.
Listen here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCOo6Au-aRw&t=1119s.

Saturday, September 20th – 7:30pm: The Harvey Wainapel Quartet, featuring Jeffrey Burr, guitar; John Wiitala, bass; and Jon Arkin, drums. $20 cover charge; students $10; kids free. BYOB. Harvey composes like a fiend, and is a master on all manner of reeds and flutes, with a soft spot for Brazilian music and consummate skill in the many periods and genres that make up jazz as we know it. His colleagues on the bandstand are among the region’s finest. They know what they’re up to. If you come to the show, you’ll get an earful.

Sunday, September 21st – 5pm: The Vince Lateano Trio, with Peter Barshay, bass and Ben Stolorow, piano. $20 cover charge; students $10; kids free. Just checking it out? The first couple of tunes are on us. A jazz drummer par excellence, Vince is a Sacramento native who’s been a cornerstone of the San Francisco jazz edifice since he hit town in the mid-1960s, fresh out of the Army. Once here, he immediately began getting club work on his own and subbed for great, established drummers like Johnny Markham when they hit the road, and hit the road himself with Woody Herman, Earl Hines and others. But he likes to stay local and he’s been a powerful force for good in jazz for six decades. You can hear him at Bird & Beckett with this trio on the third Sunday of each month. The trio also conducts a monthly jam session here on the last Sunday of the month. Don’t neglect the great opportunity to enjoy one of the most pleasurable jazz experiences San Francisco has to offer.