Scott has a good band for you this month… Darren Johnston, David Boyce, Noah Schencker, Cairo McCockran… He does it for you the 3rd Friday of the month… each and every month… this is a man who does not heed the siren’s song… he stays the course! So, who’s he got? We’ll tell you again: Darren Johnston on trumpet David Boyce on saxophone Noah Schenker on bass Cairo McCockran on drums C’mon people! This is a fantastic jazz town, a fantastic jazz scene. Join us! Bring dough for the musicians, and donate to the venue! You’ll only regret it if you don’t do it and you come some day to find a yoga studio in our place. We’ll stick as long as humanly possible, but we rely on the community’s support! That’s you, and you, and you! Damn if the community hasn’t made it possible this long… 20 years, come May!

Elliott Levin; Mogauwane Mahloele; Mark Pino, drums Elijah Pontecorvo, bass Elliott Levin is a legendary poet and vocalist on the Philly free jazz scene, traveling out to the Bay Area, a solar flare on any bandstand. In the company of Mogauwane Mahloele, South African percussionist, instrument builder, sculptor and painter, bassist Elijah Pontecorvo and drummer Mike Pino, this promises to be an engagement without parallel at Bird & Beckett.

We sincerely regret to announce that the Bruce Ackley / Phillip Johnson date, previously scheduled for June 11th, has been postponed. We look forward to rescheduling when possible. Bruce Ackley has been a cornerstone of the world-traveled, San Francisco-based saxophone quartet Rova since its founding in 1978.  Born in Rochester, New York in 1948, he began singing in choral groups at age 10, taking up the saxophone in 1970. He formed his first improvising trio that year with friends from his art school days at Wayne State in Detroit, where he studied painting and drawing. In 1971 he relocated to the Bay Area. Largely self-taught, Bruce studied saxophone briefly with Lee Hester and Noel Jewkes, and clarinet with Beth Custer and Ben Goldberg. Throughout the 1970s he was involved with the emerging free improvisation scene in San Francisco, and formed Sound Clinic with Lewis Jordan and George Sams in 1975.…

2nd year! Students in the SF Conservatory of Music’s “Roots, Jazz & American Music” BMUS degree program host their peers from Bay Area colleges and high schools. No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.

Contributors Betsy Chafcouloff, Rita Delgado, Kathryn A. Johnon and Mary Jo Lazear join editor Marjorie Lasky to read from their pieces included in the new anthology, You’re Doing What? Older Women’s Tales of Achievement and Adventure — which is bursting with 62 memorable first-person tales and photos. In the book, you’ll meet daring older women — like the early-sixties first-time bride finding her future husband on Craigslist; a retired speech therapist starting a clinic in Cambodia; and post-60-year-olds climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.  You’ll read about women of different races, classes, and sexual orientations facing various challenges and choices as they age. A loving daughter recounts how her mother moved beyond a “bare and unadorned” Mississippi upbringing. A California Chicana counters her mother’s denial of her Mexican heritage. A bisexual polyamorist rejects a life like her mother’s. There are (relatively) young elders – the writer/teacher/poet grappling with her legacy – and older ones –…

As we start to think about our 20th anniversary coming up in May, we at Bird & Beckett think it’s appropriate to reproduce this email from the proprietor to the store’s patrons, dated June 24, 2008: Big Move Coming Up! After nine years in its present location on Diamond Street, Bird & Beckett is moving in September to a new spot in the neighborhood, just around the corner and up the block at 653 Chenery. I’m counting on another twenty years in the book business in Glen Park, and this looks like the best way to secure that idea. Come 2029, maybe I’ll be ready to sell the shop and find a nice spot beneath a cork tree to sniff the flowers and read a book. But first, this… Bird & Beckett’s new space is the one currently occupied by the library, which is packing up August 31st and moving…

Born September 27, 1934, Blanche Bebb passed away on March 10, 2018 at the age of 83. She lived for years on Chenery Street, near the corner of Diamond, with her daughter Karen and granddaughter Jenna, and was a constant presence at the bookshop from the day it opened until a stroke made it impossible for her to stay in her apartment. Even then, she came back to visit whenever she could. But while she lived in Glen Park, she was well known and loved by the friends she made among the neighborhood’s residents and denizens, shopkeepers and clerks, waitresses and bartenders, restaurateurs and service workers– not to mention the vast number of individuals she encountered across the City drawn together by their shared passions for culture and social justice. Her profound feelings for literature, music, art, the theater and the people she respected and cared about were completely intertwined,…

$20 cover; $10 for students, musicians, limited income. On their new recording, “A History of Choro,” Duo Violão + 1 survey the history and evolution of choro music, revealing its rhythmic and harmonic permutations. In the process, they have created an album “coherent in timbre and vision while marvelously varied in its nuances.” Guitarists Rogério Souza and Edinho Gerber from Brazil (Duo Violão) have joined forces with Bay Area-based percussionist Ami Molinelli (the “+ 1”) to make the record, and now for a series of concerts and workshops in the Bay Area, including this concert at Bird & Beckett. According to Molinelli, “The intention for this album overall was to ensure that each song reflects a different musical style within the genre of choro and to showcase reinterpretations of more recognized tunes as well as lesser known compositions.” Their music traces choro’s history from the foundational block of the late…

Scott Barnhill, tenor saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Smith Dobson, drums with guest vocalist Louise DeLucchi Scott Barnhill has been a force on the Bay Area jazz scene for decades. Son of the well-traveled drummer Buddy Barnhill and singer Louise DeLucchi, it’s in his blood. Scott has held his own on stage with such jazz superstars as Terrance Blanchard, Charlie Haden, Joe Henderson, Mulgrew Miller, Cedar Walton, Henry Robinette, Joe Gilman, Jeff Alkire, Peppe Merolla, Peter Horvath, and Zigaboo Modeliste.