Lewis Jordan…plays a mean sax, sweet and mellow, sharp and staccato, richly complex, as the mood demands.  Jordan is a triple threat– a virtuoso on alto saxophone, a deft and ingratiating comic actor and a poetically humorous writer. — Robert Hurwitt

photo by Frank Kabelka

Music at Large is Lewis’ vehicle for jazz expression.  Much can be learned about the man and the artist from his website at www.lewisjordan.com.

His collaborators on the bandstand this afternoon, John Carlos Perea (electric bass, Native American flute, vocal) and Jimmy Biala (traps & percussion), are well-traveled and well-respected Bay Area artists of the first rank, active and supremely talented participants in a multicultural fabric of musicians and artists that have been producing art of the highest magnitude across the region for decades.

This performance of Music at Large will be a deep and electrifying, and joyful, afternoon of music at Bird & Beckett — the kind of experience the Bay Area is capable of producing again and again as long as we keep our artists housed, working and fed.  Don’t miss this opportunity!  Support the artists that can feed your soul if you’ll just let them!

Bird & Beckett and its various performance series are just a small part of the riches we’re blessed with in the region.  Support us, support the other venues and, crucially, support the artists by seeking out their performances.  Catch Lewis with his long-time collaborators QR Hand and Brian Auerbach the night before this show — on Saturday, March 12th — at the EastSide Cultural Center in Oakland, performing as WordWind Chorus.  And four days later at the Berkeley Arts Festival Free World Third Thursday performance, be there when poet devorah major joins in with the group called Conjure, featuring India Cooke on violin alongside Lewis, Joe McKinley on bass and Donald Robinson on drums.

Enlist your friends and confederates to keep the culture strong by turning out for these beautiful events! And seeks ways to support the activists and politicians who are working against tremendous odds to find ways to counter the pressures that are constantly applied to those who need basic security and deserve much more as they contribute their talents and intelligence to realize the potential of our shared culture.

Please mark your calendar for Tuesday, April 5th, 7pm, when activist Amy Farah Weiss will conduct an informational meeting on the efforts of the Saint Francis Homelessness Challenge and its allies to aid our unhoused neighbors in San Francisco, efforts that reverberate throughout the Bay Area.