BIRD & BECKETT CULTURAL LEGACY PROJECT
Two sets focused on the influence of the late Ornette Coleman, featuring Patrick Wolff on tenor sax; Grant Levin on piano; Doug Stuart on bass; and Vinnie Rodriguez on drums. An excellent brief discussion of Ornette’s career and influence can be found at this link. Drummer Vinnie Rodriguez, who leads our 4th Saturday dates, was born in Daly City and raised in Danville, where he spent most of his childhood and teen years playing sports. At the age of 20, he bought a drum set and got deep into jazz, and was fortunate enough to study with John Maltester (LMC-Pittsburgh) and Ray Brown (Cabrillo-Aptos). He earned a BM & MA in jazz studies from SJSU, where he studied with Joe Hodge, Jason Lewis and Frank Sumares. Since finishing school, he’s stayed busy gigging in San Francisco venues including The Bayview Boat Club, Bird & Beckett Books and Club Deluxe. He plays…
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Each July, LaborFest floods the City with programs in venues all over town. Â Haven’t been paying attention? Â Turn to their website and see what you’ve missed and what is coming up in the next ten days or so. Â It’s at this link. Tonight, it’s Bird & Beckett’s turn to share the labor movement’s vast riches with you, as the LaborFest Writers Group gathers to share their essays exploring our present cataclysm of outrageous rent hikes, Ellis Act evictions, phony owner move-ins, all indicative of a de facto cultural cleansing that’s going on in the pursuit of a shiny and shallow present whose worth is measured in terms of fat cash flows unavailable to most of us. We’d say it’s important to realize that “most of us” is the key, and that solidarity — a time-honored labor principle — is the only way we’ll win the day. LaborFest programs this month…
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Ed Coletti has recently published a new book of poems, The Problem with Breathing, and is joined in this reading by friends and fellow North Bay poets David Magdalene and David Beckman. An open mic follows. Bird & Beckett’s twice-monthly (1st & 3rd Mondays) poetry series is hosted by Jerry Ferraz, a near-legendary peripatetic bard & troubadour.
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Pugsley Buzzard! The piano wonder from Down Under… He’s back on tour, and returns for his fourth Bird & Beckett appearance, an occasion that makes us gleefully happy! Pugs is at once a rollicking stride piano master and a gravelly voiced singer, plumbing the extremes of dark fate and wry, whisky-soaked self-reflection. He plays barrelhouse blues & boogie woogie, growls his dark & titillating songs, and pumps out magnificent Harlem stride with a monstrous left hand and a dextrous right one.  A Sunday evening of good company, good music & a glass of wine… add a book to that mix, and, why, it’s magic!  Or voodoo… Pugsley will undoubtedly draw from his recent album, “Chasin’ Aces,” recorded in New Orleans and Wentworth, New South Wales with fantastic musicians in both locales.  From here, he flies on Monday morning to Alabama, Tennessee, New Orleans and other stops before heading for dates in France, Belgium… Catch him now at Bird &…
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Bassist Heshima Mark Williams leads our 3rd Saturday dates.  He’s a San Francisco native whose playing springs from thirty years’ experience of the Bay Area’s rich musical heritage.  Heshima studied under the tutelage of the first African-American classical bassist in the Boston Symphony, Dr. Ortiz Walton.  He has toured with trombonist Julian Priester; trumpeter Eddie Henderson; saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Simmons and Idris Ackamoor (as a member of The Pyramids); vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson; and pianist Jeff Chimenti.  And he has recorded on albums by Julian Priester and Bobby Hutcherson, as well as Japanese pianist Saya Saitol, jazz blues vocalist Lady Memphis and jump blues vocalist Lavay Smith; The Pyramids; saxophonist Robert Stewart; and guitarist Calvin Keyes, among others.  Along the way, Heshima has also performed with countless Bay Area jazz artists, including violinist India Cook, vibraphonist Yancey Taylor, and harpist Destiny Mohammed. Gaea Schell performs regularly around the Bay Area, sharing the…
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It’s the Lost Trio plus One! Â The one is our fearless and venerated leader, guitarist Scott Foster, and the trio is (are?) Philip Greenlief on reeds, Dan Seamans on bass and Tom Hassett on drums.
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Free jazz from two musicians who have been exploring new territories for decades.  Check your preconceptions at the door and enjoy a little post-Independence Day freedom — from dogma, convention and whatever expectations you might be inclined to harbor. Ira Kamin got his start in Chicago, making his mark on keyboards with the great blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield. Kamin and Bloomfield came out to California together in the late 1960s, and Ira has been here since.  Early on, he explored blues and country styles on records like as Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line” while “honing his singular avant-garde /aleatoric classical piano style.”  Along the way, his piano and organ work was also featured on albums by Bloomfield, Nick Gravenitis and Otis Rush,  He’s traveled many miles since those storied beginnings. San Francisco-based drummer and producer PC Muñoz recently released a recording of Ira and himself that…
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Special command return engagement!  Todd Novak and the Benny Hillbilleez! Take singer-songwriter-guitarist Todd Novak from the Cowlicks and Cowlicks bassist Johnnie Hamilton, add drummer Martyn Jones from the Mermen, who also drums for the Cowlicks, and Scott Theakston, who’s played with George Clinton — then set them loose for 90 minutes of killer surf green guitar rave-ups, with a rip roaring repertoire of surf n’ turf, ska, rockabilly and movie music, and yeehaw! you’ve got the Benny Hillbilleez playing the latest installment of our Surf-a-billy Swing Time Dance Party…
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Grant Levin will be in the shop with bassist Chris Amberger, playing informally as a duo from 4-6 pm… plan to just browse around, as the chairs won’t be set out ’til 7:00 for “jazz club” — our regular Saturday night date — which will swing into its thing at 7:30 when Grant leads a quartet featuring saxophonist Jonathan Bautista, Chris on bass, and drummer Mark Lee. $10 cover between 7:30 and 9:45. Â After that, sneak in for free for the final couple of tunes, but do tip the band! Â It’s the thing to do!!!
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Jimmy Ryan leads the band on the 2nd Friday of each month… tonight, Dorothy Lefkovits sings, with Joe Cohen on tenor sax, Stu Pilorz on trombone, Don Alberts on piano, Aaron Cohn on bass. Â Ron Marabuto subs for Jimmy Ryan tonight.
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Two widely admired San Francisco poets, followed by an open mic.
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Why are they called “Buena Vista?” Why, it’s just ’cause they look so damned good! And they play good too! Modeled on Eddie Condon’s band that held forth in New York in the 30s and 40s, the Buena Vista Jazz Band plays the original American chamber music, birthed by black musicians in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century– a musical tradition that traveled up the big muddy Mississippi to Chicago and flooded across the continent, sailed the seas, resonates still. Syncopated, intricate, freewheeling and joyful. Every year, we ask the Buena Vista Jazz Band back to Bird & Beckett to help us wish a happy birthday to Louis Armstrong, himself born at the turn of the 20th, whose birthday is traditionally celebrated on Independence Day. The Buena Vista Jazz Band features: Don Neely on clarinet John Hunt on trombone Noel Weidkamp on trumpet Si Perkoff on piano…
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Two of the City’s premiere young saxophonists — Smith Dobson V and Downtown Danny Brown — go head to head at jazz club for the 4th of July — with bassist John Wiitala and drummer Tony Johnson stoking the fire. Scale the heights of San Francisco jazz as it’s played in 2015!
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jazz in the bookshop every Friday, 5:30-8:00 pm Friday, July 3rd: Â SeaBop Trio Don Prell, bass –Â Scott Foster, guitar –Â Eugene Pliner, piano The 1st Friday of every month, Don Prell brings in an aggregation he calls The SeaBop Ensemble, kicking off another round of Fridays. Â The co-founders of Bird & Beckett’s long running jazz series follow suit: Â with Jimmy Ryan fielding a quintet or sextet on the second Fridays, Scott Foster taking the third for a fresh unit of his devising, and Chuck Peterson leading his 230 Jones Street quintet on the fourth. Bird & Beckett’s Friday jazz dates started in late 2002– and somewhere along the way trumpeter Ernie Figueroa, may he rest in peace, gave it its name. And on it goes!
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