BIRD & BECKETT CULTURAL LEGACY PROJECT
Grant Levin, piano. Chris Amberger, bass. Jon Frank, drums. $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please) / byob. Students $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. The Jon Frank Trio plays standards and jazz versions of Jewish songs. The trio has built a solid rapport over the past several years, and features one of the hidden gems of San Francisco jazz, the pianist Grant Levin, and a veteran bassist who cut his teeth with Art Blakey. Bassist Chris Amberger came of age in Oakland in the late ’60s, picking up the instrument in high school and penetrating the East Bay folk and blues scene alongside his sister, a singer and guitarist. He reached a high level on the bass in jazz while a student under the tutelage of George Duke at Oakland’s Merritt College from 1967 to 1969. He first recorded in 1968, as…
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Andrew Paul Nelson is a poet living in North Beach where he owns and operates Golden Sardine with his wife Caitlyn. His book of poems How to Draw A Guillotine was released by Living Poets in 2024. Mukethe Kawinzi is a transsexual goatherder and land steward working at the intersection of the pastoral, modern Black agrarianism, queer identity, and contemporary rural life. He has farmed in sustainable and organic agriculture for six years, with a focus on artisanal cheesemaking, non-violent livestock handling, and regenerative grazing. He is the author of ‘touching grass’ (Porkbelly Press), ‘Koans to a Young Cowboi’ (Bottlecap Press), ‘rut’ (Ghost City Press Summer Series), and ‘saanens, nubians, one lamancha’ (Winner, Quarterly West Chapbook Contest), as well as the winner of the inaugural ALOCASIA Grant for Queer Nature Writers. He currently traverses the open range with a herd of 300 Spanish cashmere range goats to restore coastal prairie, rehabilitate degraded soils, and mitigate the effects of climate change on…
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Joel Behrman, trumpet. Rico Jones, saxophone. Matt Clark, piano Essiet Okon Essiet, bass. Sylvia Cuenca, drums. $25 cover charge / byob. Students $10. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Sylvia Cuenca, born and raised in San Jose, was called while still in her teenage years for her first professional gig by the late, great guitarist Eddie Duran at the original iteration of Jazz at Pearl’s, when it was an afterhours club in the basement of the Great Eastern Restaurant in Chinatown. Pearl’s moved up and over onto Broadway where it had a 13-year long run as San Francisco’s most important jazz club from 1990 to its closure in 2003. Sylvia headed for NYC in the late 1980s and established a stellar career that included a four-year stint as saxophone legend Joe Henderson’s drummer, and a seventeen-year run as the drummer for trumpeter Clark Terry’s band. She’s bi-coastal…
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Sunday, August 2nd – 5pm Jam Session! The Sai Ray Quartet — Sai Ray, trumpet; Armaan Mishra, piano; Yoav Konig, bass; Nicholas DiMaria; drums– plays a set and hosts the August edition of our First Sundays Student-Centric Jam Session. It’s Happy Hour. Pay what you will! Donate to the BBCLP to underwrite our emerging musicians programming and support the future of jazz in San Francisco! _____
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Flavia Cerviño-Wood, violin Andrew Voigt, woodwinds Derek Coombs, piano Harold Carr, bass and compositions Susanna Goldenstein, percussion. Album release concert celebrating A Bird Is Whiter Than The Moon. Everyone who attends will receive a free copy of the album! $25 cover charge / byob for adults — cash at the door, please! Students $10. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Harold Carr has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Crystal Gayle, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John McCuen, Steve Lacy, Catie Curtis, Matt Flinner, Alan Braufman, Gino Robair and Andrew Voigt. Harold has been a musician/poet-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, guest soloist at the Frutillar Music Festival in Chile, composer/soloist with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in Guang Zhou, China, invited poet for the Utah State Governor at the Governor’s Mansion, commissioned composer/performer at New Music America and artist-in-residence at Zion Canyon Mesa. He has worked with the Windolls Theatre of…
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The Jazz Therapy Trio brings together three seasoned Bay Area musicians for an evening of introspective, lyrical jazz. Pianist Ben Stolorow leads the ensemble, drawing on classical influences and modern jazz sensibilities shaped by studies with Fred Hersch, Stanley Cowell, and David Hazeltine. A UC Berkeley graduate and Jazzschool faculty member, Stolorow has performed at Yoshi’s, Kuumbwa Jazz Center, and festivals throughout the Bay Area and Japan. The SF Chronicle describes him as “a pianist with a gift for crafting alluring melodies that cry out for lyrics” who “interprets every piece with poise and purpose.” On bass is Heshima Mark Williams, a native San Franciscan and a neighbor of the store when we first opened in 1999, living in Berkeley now. As a youth, he studied under the first classical bassist in the Boston Symphony, Dr. Ortiz Walton, and through the five decades since, he’s played with countless top musicians from Taj…
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Jam sessions in San Francisco have a history as long as jazz has been played here. From the Barbary Coast to the present day, the session is one of the key ways the music has refreshed itself and brought old hands and young pups together. Vince Lateano has led a lot of them in his time and has been leading ours for years, a practice he’s carried from Pier 23 to the Dog Patch Saloon to the Seven Mile House to Sweetie’s Art Bar. Come enjoy the hearing the tradition unfold. No charge to play. Audience donations appreciated to help us pay the trio for its work!
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A preview of a work in progress with Linda Champagne, Carla Diamond, Trudy Fisher, Lori Gates, Patty Haze, David Katznelson, Harry Levy, Linda Ryan, Sue Sponge and special guests. Memwah is Howie Klein’s printed and photographed recollections of his life well-lived. Tasked with finishing a book upon his death in December 2025, award-winning columnist Denise Sullivan has gathered a cast of friends from his San Francisco years at KSAN, KUSF and 415 Records, to read the ’70s and ’80s portions of Klein’s memoir aloud, speak to the causes he cared about, and spin the records he loved. From the tenements of New York and its downtown psychedelic scene, on the hippie trail through Afghanistan and India, to a vegan kitchen in Amsterdam, by the mid-’70s, Klein found himself at Harvey Milk’s camera store on Castro Street, and at the center of San Francisco’s mid-’70s social, political and musical scenes. Working…
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Join us in celebrating Avotcja’s 85th birthday! Poet, Musicologist, Disc Jockey, Small Percussionist, Prose Writer in Many Genres, Culture Hero! Avotcja’s award-winning group Modúpue (Gratitude) is an ensemble that stretches to as many players as well fit a venue Tonight, Modúpue is: Avotcja, poetry and small multi-percussion. Sandi Poindexter, violin. Jon Jang, piano. Francis Wong, saxophone and flute. Heshima Mark Williams, bass. Raul Ramirez, multi-percussion. The cover charge for the sextet tonight is $25-35 sliding scale, cash or venmo, payable at the door / byob. College and high school students – $10. Grade school and younger, free. No one turned away for lack of funds. Wheelchair accessible. Avotcja was named “Jazz Hero” by the West Coast Chapter of the Jazz Journalists Association in 2015 and was in the same year awarded the JaZzline Institute BAJABA Lifetime Achievement Award and the PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also been the…
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Kasey Knudsen, saxophone. Harvey Wainapel, saxophone. John Wiitala, bass. Jon Arkin, drums. $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please); byob. Students $10; kids free. For reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733 Kasey Knudsen and Harvey Wainapel, highly accomplished saxophonists acclaimed for their work in diverse genres and their mastery of the full range of wind instruments, join forces across generations in this new quartet setting with equally talented and experienced colleagues, bassist John Wiitala and drummer Jon Arkin, to perform a thoughtfully selected repertoire that works well in a “chordless” setting, without piano or guitar — music that’s at once accessible and fascinating in its complexity. These four jazz musicians have long been mutual admirers and frequent collaborators while traveling individual paths in their careers. They’ve developed a unique quartet that they’re excited to bring to Bird & Beckett in its public debut. Harvey Wainapel, the senior partner…
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Eli Yamin, piano & vocal. Roberta Donnay, vocal. Simon Planting, bass. Sylvia Cuenca, drums. $20 cover charge at the door, cash please! And bring your own beverage; we have cups, openers, etc. Student cover charge is $10. Kids free. Eli Yamin (widely known as “Dr. E”) is out from New York City to play blues, bebop and swing — topical original songs mixed with classics by Thelonious Monk, Elizabeth Cotten, and Willie Dixon. A very bluesy jazz pianist and cultural ambassador, Dr. E’s joyful style has taken him from performances with Mercedes Ellington, Illinois Jacquet and Walter Perkins to four appearances with his own band at the White House for the Obamas and ten global tours for the U.S. Department of State. His work embraces jazz as a tool for community building and social justice built on the idea that “the blues is the roots, everything else is the fruits.”…
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David Oppenheimer is a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law, director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and faculty co-director of the pro bono program. He is the author of ten books on civil rights and discrimination law, including the first law school casebook in comparative equality law. The Diversity Principle (Yale University Press, 2026), the work of a diversity skeptic turned admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last two hundred years, how it evolved as it was adopted in commerce and science, and the implications of the current backlash. The diversity principle–the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, identities, and viewpoints produce better work by engaging with one another–was a core tenet of the first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. It was the inspiration for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, a touchstone of academic freedom; a hallmark of Charles Eliot’s remaking of…
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Make Bird & Beckett a habit Sundays at 5pm! Stay for a tune, stay for two sets — whatever suits your Sunday! Just byob and a friend or two and have a nice time in the neighborhood. Contribute what you can to the kitty so we can pay these fine musicians, but don’t stress. Our donors have your back. Become one yourself, if you’re flush. It’s good for you, and it’s good for the culture! This week, Peck Allmond comes back for visit. Born in Rochester, NY, Peck was raised in Berkeley, a 1980 graduate of the storied Berkeley High jazz program that gave the jazz world the likes of David Murray, Will Bernard, Craig Handy, Benny Green, Peter Apfelbaum, Joshua Redman. Now, he’s a New York guy who’s performed with Oliver Lake, Meshell NdegeOcello, Peter Apfelbaum, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Lovano, James Carter, Jimmy Smith, Benny Green, Richie…
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Kristen Strom, saxophone Jhoely Garay, guitar Scott Sorkin, guitar Nick Panoutsos, bass Jim Kassis, drums $25 cover charge at the door (cash, please!) / byob. Students $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Kristen Strom and Scott Sorkin are a musical couple who are two of the Bay Area’s most in-demand musicians. For this show at Bird & Beckett they will explore their love of Brazilian music with special guest, guitarist Jhoely Garay. Garay is a New York-based guitarist, composer, arranger, and educator from Mexico City, whose music expresses her passion for straight-ahead swing, contemporary jazz, and melodies and rhythms from Latin America. The rhythm section is completed with NYC-based bassist Nick Panoutsos and drummer Jim Kassis. Jhoely Garay has become an integral part of the dynamic jazz scene in New York and Mexico, collaborating with iconic artists such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Steve Wilson, Darcy…
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Scott Foster & Myles Boisen,guitars. Lisa Mezzacappa, bass. Jon Arkin, drums. $20 cover charge (cash, please) / byob. Students $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. The Mad Explorations Of Scott Foster & Myles Boisen swinging their axes through tangled thickets. Holy Les Paul, Batman! two guitarists tinker with tunes not written for the guitar!
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