It’s a big weekend all over town, and there’s plenty going on right here at Bird & Beckett.

SeaBop!

Friday, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., we offer the ebullient bop of Don Prell’s SeaBop Ensemble, with Jerry Logas on reeds, Michael Parsons on piano and Chris Bjorkbom on drums.

San Francisco’s longest running weekly jazz party is celebrating its tenth anniversary!  520 consecutive Friday performances!

With a special nod to Mary Goode, largely responsible for making Bird & Beckett a key San Francisco jazz venue…

And on Sunday, at 2 p.m., Litquake occupies Bird & Beckett when we host five writers who cut their teeth on the radical politics of the late ’60s and continue to be avidly engaged… Elaine Elinson, Hilton Obenzinger, Jonah Raskin, Nina Serrano and Barry Willdorf.  Elaine reported from the Philippines during the Marcos regime and recently published Wherever There’s a Fight! on California progressive struggle; Nina is a poet and media producer (hosting KPFA’s La Raza Chronicles and Open Book) and co-founded the Mission Cultural Center; Jonah, Hilton & Barry were all engaged in the occupation of Columbia University in 1968 and subsequently traveled their own individual, engaged paths in the decades since — Jonah eventually writing and teaching at Sonoma State, Hilton eventually writing and teaching at Stanford, and Barry taking his Columbia law degree into long and distinguished practice serving social justice causes.  This energized reading event will give valuable perspective to the struggles of our own contemporary times.

Been enjoying Hardly Strictly Bluegrass?  Mid-afternoon Sunday, you might want to hightail it back to Bird & Beckett. Consider that jazz is certainly hardly strictly bluegrass– you couldn’t hardly get less strictly! And we’ve got a stupendous booking on Sunday at 4:30 p.m. in our “which way west?” series — trumpeter Jay Sanders, pianist Adam Schulman, bassist Eric Markowits and drummer Smith Dobson recreate and elaborate beautifully on the music of late 1950s jazz icon Kenny Dorham.

Dorham’s name is not all that widely known any more, but to the jazz cognoscenti he remains one of the really great trumpeters and composers of the era. And this band has done a magnificent job on their recent CD of Dorham’s music. We can guarantee a terrific small group evocation of some subtly killer music. These are all top young players on the local scene, and they’re coming to your neighborhood!