The music kicks off this Friday at 6pm, when piano professor Eric Shifrin brings his In Crowd–Ari Munkres on bass and Mark Lee on drums–to celebrate the songs of Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael, the droll pianist, singer and tunesmith who brought us Stardust, Skylark, Georgia on My Mind and a host of other indelibly memorable melodies. 

 

 

[NO LATE SHOW THIS FRIDAY. The 8:30pm show will be rescheduled, as the leader has sustained an injury that will take awhile to heal. Watch for the announcement of a new date after the first of the year for Keshav Batish, traps drummer and sitar player, in musical  conversation with the renowned tabla master Ashwin Batish, broadening to include his ensemble ensemble called EKTA with saxophonists Kristen Strom and  Shay Salhov along with guitarists Nelsen Hutchison and Ryan Pate.]

 

Saturday, from 7:30-9:30pm, bassist Amina Scott brings a trio to Bird & Beckett to conclude a five-stop California tour in support of her new album, “Where the Wild Seed Grows.” Amina was born and raised in Oakland, received her B.A. at Loyola University New Orleans and her M.A. at Florida State University, and remains in New Orleans, where she teaches at Loyola University while keeping a busy performing schedule. She’s played with artists including David Murray, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Jazzmeia Horn, Joanne Brackeen, Nicholas Peyton and Herlin Riley, and tours with Dee Dee Bridgewater’s project WE EXIST! and the DDB Big Band. 

 

Sunday at 10am, an SF Lives/Live Talks livestream with independent reporter Denise Sullivan. This month’s guest is San Francisco writer Ben Terrall. Celebrating issue number 10 of his publication, Namaste, Motherfucker, Terrall writes on film noir, international affairs and domestic drama with wit and wisdom. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, CounterPunch, Noir City, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and other fine outlets. He thanks his parents for nurturing both his movie and book addictions from an early age. The SFLives Project, is a series of candid conversations with San Francisco’s artists, activists and free thinkers. Conceived as a print media column by Denise Sullivan for the San Francisco Examiner where it ran from 2018-2022, SFLives transitioned into a live-streamed conversation, produced by Jenna Littlejohn, for Bird & Beckett. Past editions are archived on our YouTube channel. 

 

Sunday at 5pm, guitar slinger Mitch Polzak brings the Royal Deuces and pedal steel guitar master Joe Goldmark for a wailing romp through Americana territory mapped and crisscrossed by classic and outlaw country artists from Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Charlies Rich and Pride, and Johnny Cash to Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, displaying guitar chops honed from long study of the greats whose names are hardly known to most of us, but revered by the cognoscenti — Joe Maphis, Don Rich, Marty Stuart, and more familiarly, Duane Eddy and Roy Clark. Be ready for a masterclass in Honky Tonk, the Bakersfield Sound and the genre comprising nothin’ but trucking songs!