Bassists in town!

The Jimmy Ryan Quintet
with guest bassist Charles Thomas
jazz in the bookshop every Friday

Friday, June 9, 5:30 to 8:00 pm

With Jimmy’s regular bassist, Bishu Chatterjee, off to Kolkata this month, we’re pleased to welcome Charles Thomas to the stage — and also a brief cameo appearance during the second set by naturalist / bassist Thor Hanson, whose book Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle has just been published by Basic Books.  To top it all off, Putter Smith is up from L.A. for the huge harmonic bass convergence (read below), and will likely stop in.  You might remember him as an assassin in the Bond film “Diamonds are Forever”, but jazz aficionados know him for his work with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonius Monk.

By the way, if you see hundreds of folks lugging those giant fiddles around town in the next few days, you’re not imagining things… the International Society of Bassists is convening its annual convention at SFSU and many an airline seat into and out of SFO will be occupied by a stand-up bass this weekend…

As for leader Jimmy Ryan, he started on the drums in L.A. in the 1950s, and reached the San Francisco jazz scene in the early 1960s — and has been a regular feature of Bird  & Beckett’s Friday evening jazz series since 2002… his quintet features trumpeter Henry Hung, trombonist Danny Grewen and guitarist Scott Foster — all stellar young players integral to the San Francisco jazz scene of today!