which way west? Sunday concert series.
All ages welcome!
No cover charge, but your generous donations
make it possible for us to pay the musicians.

Sunday, September 8th – 4:30-6:30 pm:  The Betty Shaw Quartet,
with Ian Carey (trumpet), Robb Fisher (bass) & Ron Marabuto, drums.
Live recording today for KCSM 91.1 FM’s “In the Moment” by Jim Bennett

A local legend, pianist Betty Shaw is known for a love & deep understanding of jazz that’s led her to play anywhere, anytime, with top flight collaborators — with a commitment born of nothing so much as pure joy in the music.  She first learned the instrument as a depression-era kid, born in Albuquerque and raised through the teen years around Denver, lucky to have a piano to play on.  Eventually, the family moved to the L.A. area, and once she reached adulthood, the need to make a living took her away from the music for what seemed to her a very long stretch.

But in her 30s, Betty was already gravitating back to the piano, and to jazz, in a big way– enamored of Bill Evans & taking every opportunity to hear him at Shelly’s Manne Hole and wherever she could, digging also pianist Tommy Flanagan, taking theory lessons from trumpeter Don Ellis on a half-dozen Saturdays at UCLA, making the drive down from her home in Claremont on her day off to do so.  In her 40s, she moved up to Santa Cruz, drawn by a banner stretched across Hwy 1 advertising the jazz curriculum at Cabrillo Community College, and the rest has unfolded at a dizzying pace over the 40 years since– moving up to the East Bay in the early 1980s, listening closely to John Marabuto, a Bay Area piano legend (as well as her piano tuner), playing in the local clubs, bars and restaurants at every opportunity, hanging in the doorway of Keystone Korner to catch the music of the giants passing through, taking lessons from tenor titan Joe Henderson, settling into a solid collaborative groove with the late bassist Chuck Metcalf, teaching at the Community Music Center in the Mission…

A storied booking at the Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley, for a long time with Chuck Metcalf and with Ron Marabuto (John’s son) on drums, has given her ample room to grow musically and has built her a wildly enthusiastic following.

Her early devotion to the music of Bill Evans has yielded now to a central focus on Monk and bop, and we don’t doubt she’s still growing and developing, belying her 80+ years.  Wherever she’s at, that’s where you want to be!  Sunday, Sept. 8, that’s at Bird & Beckett!