A few pix of the May 12 backyard benefit, which raised a month’s rent for Bird & Beckett and the Cultural Legacy Project! It’s quite amazing that we have the support of so many wonderful people. This here is the very nicely sunny tip of the iceberg. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks to the artists. To Billie. To Jessica! Thanks to everyone. And thanks to Jeanne Marie Hallacy and Gary Bridges for these pix! Thank you all! Thank you, Jerry!  

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwKYRAYyIho” /] Viktorija GečytÄ— & the Gene Perla Trio 10th Anniversary Tour             Spring into Summer, 2018 Their third Bird & Beckett appearance! 7:30 – City Jazz Sextet John Luu, trumpet     Dianne Douglas, alto saxophone Megan Wegman, piano     Ollie Dudek, bass     Raul Menjivar, drums Helen Palma, vocals and small percussion 8:30 & 9:30 – Viktorija GečytÄ— & the Gene Perla Trio Viktorija GečytÄ—, vocals Sean Gough, piano     Gene Perla, bass     Jon Arkin, drums At this link, find more video of Viktorija, Gene & Sean (collectively, Go Trio) with a variety of side musicians, and Viktorija in other settings as well, through many seasons of exquisite jazz in far flung locales https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMqAvsRLeeLvc-bgWiyD6lYO3XTc9yObK

Come to an end-of-the-year party for City College Jazz Club! The CCSF Jazz Club is made up of musicians who’ve played for decades as well as musicians who are new to jazz. There are 3 vocalists, 2 pianists, 5 horn players, and a rhythm section that includes fretless electric bass. The club was created in early 2017 so that jazz musicians at CCSF could play together, network, learn and get performance opportunities.  Come hang with the musicians and enjoy a set of performances that will show their range and chops in a congenial atmosphere for sure!    Set: Big Bertha Autumn Leaves Gibraltar Chega De Saudade Cry Me A River Sunny Black Nile Jelly Roll Nica’s Dream The Jody Grind Yearnings What Is This Thing Called Love Lonelyville C-jam Blues The band: Adina Pernell, vocals Helen Palma, vocals, violin Stephanie Woodford, piano, vocals Megan Wegmann, piano John Luu, trumpet, flute…

Walker Brents III addresses a different topic in each of his monthly talks, holding us in thrall with his storytelling prowess and his insights born of a wide-ranging sensibility and curiosity. This Sunday, he takes on the epic of Gilgamesh, born between the Tigris and the Euphrates, older than the Iliad, older than the Bible, older than the Koran, yet startlingly alive. An elemental drama to challenge our ideas of good and evil.

Aaron Germain’s Chance Ensemble plays a night of all original compositions, with a mix of straight ahead jazz, Brazilian, funk, and fusion. Arrangements include duos and trios within the quartet featuring: Mary Fettig, flute Murray Low, piano Jon Krosnick, drums Aaron Germain, upright and electric bass FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/368193923692006/ Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnw0E6T5Qw The Chance Ensemble and Bird & Beckett thank Jazz in the Neighborhood for underwriting this show through its “Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund” — supplementing your cover charges to guarantee each musician a fair night’s pay, placed at $150, for an honest night’s work. No tip jar. Learn more at https://jazzintheneighborhood.org/guaranteed-fair-wage-fund/

Two legendary players of the avant garde! Larry Ochs, reeds Donald Robinson, drums Per Bay Improviser, a crucial site for tracking avant garde music in the Bay Area (found at, no surprise, bayimproviser.com): Larry Ochs works on and breathes music. He composes. He plays saxophone. He looks for adventurous ideas to take on and for other artists – musicians and friends in other art mediums – to take them on with him. Ochs is primarily found in the worlds of “avant-garde” or “improvised music.” That means that he composes music for “structured improvisation” in general, and in particular for musicians steeped in the art of improvisation, an art form that has really only come into its own in the past 50 years in Western music, primarily thanks to the development of jazz as influenced by the blues and then Western art music, as well as to the increased exposure of…

May 2018 marks the start of our 19th year in business… Come celebrate on Friday, May 24th with Chuck Peterson’s legacy jazz band — the quintet known as the 230 Jones Street Literary Jazz Band and now featuring reed players Ray Loeckle and Jerry Logas, guitarist Glen Deardorff, bassist Dean Reilly and drummer Tony Johnson. 230 Jones Street plays on the fourth Sunday of every month. Chuck’s planning to join the band for this show, contingent on getting transportation down from Santa Rosa. We don’t imagine he’ll miss it! Chuck started the regular jazz thing going at Bird & Beckett in late 2002, and started us on course to become, unbelievably, what many, many musicians and patrons consider the best jazz venue in the city, now offering live music four times a week and a bit more. It was Chuck that got us going on that. We like to think that…

Established in 1937, Forum Magazine is a student-run literary journal that serves the City College of San Francisco community. Dedicated to providing a platform for the contemporary, urban voices of our institution, Forum collects, edits and publishes quality works of literature and the visual arts as produced by the CCSF family. Publication is open to any who have ever been involved with the school, whether as student, educator or employee. Forum is published twice each year, once in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Forum Magazine

Our traditional twice-monthly poetry series has been hosted by Jerry Ferraz since the beginning, with Jerry usually performing a poem or a song at the start of each session’s open mic. Tonight, Jerry will stretch out with an hour of song, accompanied by viola player Karlyn DeSteno. Together, they’ve just recently developed a beautiful musical collaboration. The open mic will follow at 8pm. Poets and musicians welcome.

The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project and the Jazz Philanthropists Union, with financial support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, present Alternative Acts: Seeking Truth Above #F 5/20/18: Kasey Knudsen Quartet Kasey Knudsen, sax; Lorin Benedict, vocals; Ben Goldberg, clarinet; Miles Wick, bass https://www.facebook.com/events/198530430870942/ [arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUut7EmasvU” /] The “Alternative Acts” series is devoted to improvised and other avant garde musical approaches by locally based artists beginning on April Fool’s Day with Ouroboros (Sheldon Brown and Joseph Noble, reeds; Andrew Joron, theremin; Clark Coolidge, drums). The series continues on April 18th with a program featuring the poets Steve Dalachinsky, Neeli Cherkovski and Clark Coolidge with pianist Walter Earl; followed on April 20th by Scott Amendola’s 3-in-1 with Raffi Garabedian, saxophone and Zach Ostroff, bass; on April 21st, animals and giraffes with Phillip Greenlief, saxphones and Bb clarinet; Claudia La Rocco, text and voice; Danishta Rivero, voice and electronics ; and John Shiruba, electric and acoustic guitars and preparations; and on May 5th, Dark…

Jane Kim! Jane has been a committed activist, loyal community member and elected official in SF for the last 20 years. She’s supporting universal child care for working families, affordable housing, health care and housing to resolve homelessness, clean streets, and sensible solutions to transit problems. She’s our hope! Please RSVP to Glen Park resident and Kim supporter Hae Min Cho, who has helped us set up this event at [email protected] to help us accommodate everyone.  All are welcome!

“This jazz baby makes the ’20s roar again and swings out ’30s tunes buoyantly enough to float away even the Great Depression…”    San Jose Mercury News  Roberta Donnay & the Prohibition Mob Band wail on 1920-30s swing, blues, and roots music in the jazz tradition. About their just-released cd “My Heart Belongs to Satchmo,” critic Andrew Gilbert, writing in Berkeleyside, says “Donnay interprets tunes long embedded in Armstrong’s repertoire, like “Up A Lazy River,” “Basin Street Blues” and “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” But she also uncovers obscure gems like “I’m In the Market For You,” “Ol’ Man Mose,” and a version of “Pennies From Heaven” featuring previously unrecorded lyrics by Dan Hicks, with whom Donnay toured and recorded for a decade.” Tonight, Rebecca fronts for wiseguys Darren Johnston, trumpet, Danny Lubin-Ladin, trombone; Sam Kady, piano; Fred Randolph, bass; and Jack Dorsey, drums for two sets of…

Rafael Mandelman will visit Bird & Beckett Saturday the 19th to discuss the issues and his candidacy for the Board of Supervisors District 8 position in this June’s election. The winner in June will run again for a full term in November. Rafael is an attorney specializing in urban development issues and has served on the Board of Trustees for CCSF since 2012.

The Jazz Philanthropists Union presents… The return of flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny! Dmitri Matheny Group JAZZ FROM THE SILVER SCREEN Featuring Matt Clark piano, Ron Belcher bass and Mark Lee drums. Voted “NW Instrumentalist of the Year” in the recent Seattle Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Awards, flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny leads an all-star band in an evening of Jazz From The Silver Screen. Showcasing favorite movie themes from the 1930s to the present day, the program includes music from The Wizard of Oz (1939), An Affair To Remember (1957), Black Orpheus (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Days of Wine And Roses (1962), The Sandpiper (1965), The Godfather(1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), Chinatown (1974), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Blade Runner (1982), Round Midnight (1986) and Manchester By The Sea (2016). Flugelhorn master Dmitri Matheny has been lauded as “one of the most emotionally expressive improvisers of his generation” (International Review of Music). An honors graduate of Berklee College of Music, Dmitri Matheny vaulted onto the jazz scene in the 1990s as the protégé of jazz legend Art Farmer. Since then he has garnered critical acclaim and a loyal international following, releasing…