Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn
Dave Ellis, saxophones
Matt Clark, piano
Ruth Davies, bass
Deszon X Claiborne, drums

$25 cash cover charge
Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30pm show
BYOB
Reservations, call: 415-586-3733

Tonight’s show can also be found on our Facebook page and YouTube channel.
If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians!

Dmitri’s coming, one of the road warriors, in a major way one of our own…

Here, he’s playing with four top Bay Area-based jazz musicians — tonight at Bird & Beckett, tomorrow at the Sound Room and then a quick run down to Seaside near Monterey before jamming back up the road to a string of dates in the Pacific Northwest, where he’s made his home since 2015 in Centralia, Washington.

Born on Christmas Day in 1965 in Nashville, Tennessee, raised in Columbus, Georgia and Tucson, Arizona, where his family moved when he was twelve, he might be said to have come of age as a jazz player right here in San Francisco, after stints at Interlochen from age 18 and Berklee from age 20, and beginning an 11-year apprenticeship under the great flugelhorn player Art Farmer that lasted from 1988 until Farmer’s death in 1999.

Arriving in the Bay Area in 1989, he formed the Dmitri Matheny Group while working a day job at the SF Jazz Festival in its nascent years (the festival began in 1983 as a two-day “Jazz in the City” event). He’s grown in stature year by year, maturing over the course of 120 recordings as sideman and leader and countless miles traveling the western states by car, often with his dog along for company and always, since 1999, with the horn that belonged to Art Farmer. Beginning in the mid-1990s, his touring has taken him all over the country and internationally to 21 more, logging countless concert dates, festival performances and tours.

CASCADIA, just released in June, is Dmitri’s 12th album as a leader. We first presented him at Bird & Beckett in the spring of 2017, with Matt Clark on piano, when his 11th album, JAZZ NOIR, released in 2016, was still fresh. He returned again in 2018 and 2019, and would have performed March 28, 2020 but for the onslaught of the great virus. Tonight will mark his fourth performance from our stage. We’re more than pleased to welcome him back.

Dmitri Matheny is a jazz treasure. The lyrical Matheny has impressive chops, but it’s his warmth and soulfulness that win you over.
— All Music Guide

One reviewer wrote that with CASCADIA, “Dmitri Matheny celebrates the beauty, terrain, and expansiveness of his adopted home in the Pacific Northwest. With ongoing decades of touring, Matheny recorded his 12th album with a trio of longtime Seattle collaborators – pianist Bill Anschell, bassist Phil Sparks, and drummer Mark Ivester – with saxophonist Charles McNeal joining them from Las Vegas. Performing several inspired classics such as Tadd Dameron’s ‘On a Misty Night,’ Coltrane’s ‘After the Rain,’ and Jimmy Webb’s ‘Wichita Lineman’ adds depth and clarity to Matheny’s six original compositions and ‘Humble Origins’ by Bill Anschell. ‘Perfect Peaches’ a lyrical bossa, ‘Dark Eyes,’ a seductive noir ballad, ‘Evergreen Girl,’ a soul-jazz shuffle, ‘Bourdain,’ a memorial elegy for a great man, ‘The Lonesome Road,’ a weary traveler’s lament, and ‘Cascadia,’ the evocative title track, combine to create an emotionally expressive set that will be familiar to Matheny’s many followers across the country.”

“Dmitri Matheny has ample talent, executing beautiful lines with a flawless warm tone. An excellent performer on gentle ballads and bop scorchers alike.” – Rolling Stone