The Jazz Philanthropists Union presents… at Bird & Beckett’s Saturday night jazz club! when lights are low… November 17, 2018 – 7:30-10pm Three young cats and a grizzled jazz veteran: The Kai Lyons Quartet Kai Lyons, guitar Parker Grant, piano Robb Fisher, bass Brandon Etzler, drums This quartet has been working together weekly for the past three years at the Mystic Room, formerly called the Burritt Room, in San Francisco’s Union Square district. Kai Lyons is a 24-year old jazz guitarist with characteristics not heard since Bruce Forman made the scene, so they say… he swings, he’s bluesy in the extreme and he’s open to many genres of music — Afro Cuban, for sure.  Growing up in the Excelsior District to the soundtrack of his dad wailing on blues harp, he was surrounded by music and community from an early age. The first graduate of Scott Cmiel’s acclaimed classical guitar program at SOTA, up…

Ambient music while you browse the books… in the weekly series featuring and curated by Andre Custodio. The Audible Method series concludes today with solo sets and a collaboration by LX Rudis and Andre.   LX Rudis solo set and collaboration with series curator Andre Custodio on 11/17. More info and a sound clip here: http://www.edgetonerecords.com/rudis.html Note that the 11/17 will be the final show in the series (11/24 canceled due to the holiday weekend).  

A very special show tonight, as John Calloway — jazz flautist and composer, latin jazz specialist, former SF Arts Commissioner and a deeply respected educator — will front an ensemble featuring several former members of the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco (LJYE) who are now playing professionally in the Bay Area. Formed in 2001 by Arturo Riera, Sylvia Ramirez and John, the LJYE is a community grassroots organization that offers free scholarships to learn how to perform Afro-Latin jazz music. It’s been a spawning ground for some of the Bay Area’s most exciting new talent, many of whom have gone onto to play both nationally and internationally. Tonight at Bird & Beckett, they’ll be performing Latin jazz and jazz music to enrich & enliven your soul! John Calloway & Daniel Rivera, flutes Ruben Sandoval, trombone Nora Stanley – alto sax Omree Gal-Oz – piano Alex Farrell – bass Eric Mendez –…

Saxophonist David Boyce and guitarist Scott Foster have developed a knack for fantastic musical interaction when it’s just the two of them on the bandstand. Tonight, they’ll carry their dialog further and deeper. $10-15 suggested donation. $5-10 for students / musicians / low income.

2nd year! The new kids in town meet the founding crew! 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. The program was founded just last year, and the first crop of brilliant musicians, who arrived on the scene in September of 2017, have become the wise elders, welcoming a new contingent of jazz whiz kids just last month… Now there are too many to fit on one stage, so they’re mixing and matching each month, and brilliant music is made fresh each time out! Jazz is the sound of surprise, and of unalloyed pleasure! Come hear for yourself! No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.

Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals Kenny Owen, drums

Michael Zisman, mandolin; Jason Vanderford and Scott Foster, guitars;Joe Kyle, Jr., bass. Certainly the darlings of all San Franciscans who’ve ever witnessed their family ruckus at the Deluxe, the Americano Social Club is led by Michael Zisman on mandolin and features guitarists Jason Vanderford and Scott Foster and bassist Joe Kyle, Jr.   They play music for “la dolce vita”: a mix of romantic and eclectic melodies from all over the world. Charming and fantastic, both!   Visit their website!  https://www.americanosocialclub.com  

$25 cover charge. $10 for students, musicians, low income. Jeff Sanford leads a madcap batch of nine fine musicians through the music of Raymond Scott, John Kirby and other geniuses of mid-20th century classical cartoon compositions — with some works that spring from more modern-day classics as well! Presented by the Jazz Philanthropists Union and the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project with support from Jazz in the Neighborhood’s Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund!  There’s no bar and no tip jar tonight! Just pay your cover and BYOB, and with that help from you and Jazz in the Neighborhood, we’ll pay out $900 to this nine-piece band! It’s not a fortune for them, but it’s a sign of our appreciation and it ain’t Peanuts! It’s Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes, though, for sure! Click on the graphic below and enjoy some music from way back then! [arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3FLN0iQ9SQ” /]

With a lot of help from you, the audience, from neighborhood donors to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, a 501(c)3 organization, and from  Jazz in the Neighborhood’s Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund, we’ll pay this quartet a “living wage” of $150 per musician this evening! That’s a lot of heavy lifting for the bookshop on a Friday evening, even with the help of Jazz in the Neighborhood… so dig deep if you believe jazz music should be heard live in Glen Park and if you believe our local professional jazz musicians should be paid more than peanuts for their prodigious talent, experience & effort! But the doors are open to all regardless of their bank accounts–we want everyone to enjoy this music and support it with your ears–so don’t pay more than you can afford! Tonight, bandleader Kurt Ribak brings a program of originals for your listening pleasure! Lincoln…

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & essayist. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. Her work has been published in BOAAT, Noble/Gas Qtrly and Juked, among other journals. She is the winner of the Raedleaf Poetry Prize and has a debut book of poems titled Mother Tongue Apologize forthcoming in early 2019. Loa Niumeitolu is a Tongan poet working with the East Bay Ohlone community. Robert Anbian has been described as “a passionate virtuoso steeped in these times and deep with tradition,” according to Richard Hack, “[whose] poetry crackles with currency – hiply linguistic turns of natural originality, rhythmically brimming with a tempestuous taste of ecstasy, reason, and love.” Dusty Dog Reviews declared him “a genius or a Venusian.” This series, active for nearly twenty years, is currently curated and co-hosted by San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck with Jerry Ferraz. An open mic…

$20 cover charge Darren Johnston, trumpet Larry Ochs, saxophone Fred Frith, guitar Jason Hoopes, electric bass Jordan Glenn, drums Many will remember the music Reasons for Moving made when they played Bird & Beckett with Allison Miller on drums this back in January. In early November, Johnston, Frith and Ochs, with bassist Jason Hoopes and drummer Jordan Glenn, are back for two sets of music on the eve of their departure for a European tour that will take them to the Music Unlimited 2018 Festival, Wels, Austria on November 11th, followed by: November 13 – Festival Jazzdor, Strasbourg // Nov. 15 – Porgy and Bess, Vienna // Nov 16 – Alte Gerberei , St. Johann-in-Tirol, Austria // Nov 17 – Argo 16 in Marghera, Venice // Nov 18 – Area Sismica, Forli, Italy. Initiated by Darren Johnston and imagined originally as a one-off recording project, this uncategorizable quintet spear-headed collaboratively…

The danger with expressions like “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is — always viewing ourselves as the good people, when sometimes we are the bad things. Comfort is always good, but at times we need to change. As writers, Andi Frederick & Joseph TinGin seek to be honest in their compositions, to look objectively at their own human experiences, and to tell the truth about them. Sometimes there are no clear heroes or villains, but real humans, each with their own stories to be told. It was by no means of predestination, divine intervention, or even serendipity that Frederick and TinGin happened to have crossed paths in San Francisco in the fall of 2016, but rather a series of whelming events and decisions. However, a shared method of songwriting as self-medication, a means of processing life’s experiences, became the catalyst for a collaboration that would eventually come…

This ‘sampling’ from the work of 2nd century AD Roman poet Martialis covers some of the usual suspects, epigrams, verse tags, scurrilous and otherwise, but it also includes a number of poems from the Liber Spectaculorum, the Book of Spectacles, devoted to poems on the Games at the Colosseum and, often, in praise of Caesar. Martial’s themes can make the modern reader very uncomfortable, as well as make them laugh, even 2,000 years after his death. Neeli Cherkovski and Paul Fericano will participate with Art as interlocutors and poets. Read more on Art Beck here.

$20 cover charge; $10 for students/musicians/low income.   San Francisco Bay Area bassist, composer and bandleader Lisa Mezzacappa and her band, the Lisa Mezzacappa Six, premiere a new suite for jazz sextet, “Cosmicomics 2018,” inspired by Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s beloved “Cosmicomics” stories, which humanize various scientific, astronomical and biological phenomena into poignant and playful fables. The Lisa Mezzacappa Six, featuring tenor saxophonist Aaron Bennett, guitarist John Finkbeiner, vibraphonist Mark Clifford, electronic musician Tim Perkis, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and drummer Jordan Glenn, developed Cosmicomics 2018 during a four-concert residency at Bird & Beckett Books throughout 2018, where Mezzacappa and her musicians performed works-in-progress, discussed aspects of the stories motivating the musical composition, read from Calvino’s work, and experimented with new musical ideas and structures before an intimate and engaged literary audience. The Lisa Mezzacappa Six was formed in 2014 as an expanded version of Mezzacappa’s longtime quartet, Bait & Switch. The…

https://jackhertz.com/ byoc (bring your own coffee!)