photo by Jessica Levant, jessicalevant.com

It’s jazz club at
Bird & Beckett…
when lights are low.

Special performances, and a sweet vibe to make your Saturday night.

Don’t look back!  Tonight, trumpeter, flugelhornist & singer Dave Bendigkeit brings in a marvelous, tight quartet with David Udolf on piano, Peter Barshay on bass and Akira Tana on drums.

All of these musicians were deeply involved in creating the jazz that evolved post-1968.  By the time a lot of us thought it was just disco, these guys were driving through the changes into a dizzy atmosphere of their own making.  Says Dave, “No musical ‘rear-view mirrors’ for us…”  They’re artists.  They don’t look back.

Yes, they mine some classic material, but they’re also busy creating original music “from the great river of American music where the groove and self-expression are paramount.”

Dave began working on the San Francisco jazz scene in the early 1970s, performing with dozens and dozens of top name artists touring through town.  In the 1980s, he was the preeminent trumpeter working in local recording studios, recording hundreds of commercials and scores of film and tv soundtracks.

Members of the quartet have performed with everyone from Art Blakey, Cab Calloway, Shelly Manne and Ella Fitzgerald to Freddie Hubbard, Art Farmer, Sonny Stitt, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and so many other giants of this music.  They didn’t need the giants, though, when it came to creating exciting music.  And it’s happening still.  Right here, right now.

You’ll hear Dave here tonight and again on Sunday November 23rd.  And he can be heard weekly with his quartet, Keepers of the Flame, on Monday nights at the 7-Mile House, a gem of a local bar located on San Bruno Avenue at Geneva in Daly City.  An evening listening to this band go to work will reaffirm your faith in the delights — and the joyful profundiity – of live jazz.