Hungry to hear some of Bird & Beckett’s past live streams? Scroll down to read the posts for the shows we’ve mounted in the past seven-plus months, since the pandemic lock-down began. Every time you see the “load more” button, go ahead. It’ll stop offering you that option once you’ve arrived at the first show of the current period, back on March 12th.

The March 12th show that signaled the shift was a Thursday evening performance by two New York saxophonists, Jessica and Tony Jones, both alumni of the Berkeley High jazz program, with NYC bassist Stomu Takeishi and local hero Deszon X. Claiborne on drums. Their date at the Backroom across the Bay for the night before had been cancelled. A few hardy individuals showed up as audience. It was great music but few heard it, though the audio recording exists still. The March 12th show has no video; that capability was pioneered by our own Angela Bennett the next evening, Friday, March 13th, using her smartphone to capture two tunes, streamed live over facebook, by saxophonist Michael Zilber’s trio (Jason Lewis on drums and the bassist Tyler Harlow in his Bird & Beckett debut). We had to cancel the Saturday show over concerns about health risks to the audience we expected to assemble for Akira Tana’s Otonowa group. A few folks were in the audience the next day for a Brazilian outing by flautist Rebecca Kleinman and guitarist Julio Lemos.

After that, the era of livestreams with no audiences whatsoever began. Pianist Gaea Schell and bassist John Wiitala in duo got it rolling, and we’ve never since stopped.

Little by little through the months, the live streamed shows have grown more robust as we’ve improved the technology and have found our footing; in the past few months, beginning with the watershed Javier Santiago/Giulio X. Cetto duo date on May 29th and a return of the duo on July 24th, the technical level has stepped up considerably. Nicolas Mesa brought his sound engineering skills to bear on those dates and has helped us immensely in the ensuing months to bring our technical capabilities and skills up to a level that does justice to the artistry of the musicians.

Over time we’ll add bits of the videos from the individual shows to each of the posts below, but for the time being you can find them in all their rough glory by visiting the videos tab on our facebook page. Use this link:  https://www.facebook.com/pg/bird.and.beckett/videos/?ref=page_internal. The past few months of shows can also be found on our YouTube channel. Going forward, you can expect live streams every Thursday and Friday on facebook and Youtube, at 7:30pm.