Guitarist Scott Foster, a cornerstone of the Bird & Beckett jazz edifice since the beginning, brings in drummer Chris Gamper, whose Bay Area Jazz Documentation Project has been catching great musicians in the act of creating fantastic music from whole cloth for several years now! Tonight, with Dann Zinn on saxophone and Adam Lowdermilk on bass, we’re locking down a piece of the jazz history you’re a part of! Welcome to San Francisco jazz, 2018!  

Author Terry Tarnoff discusses his novel The Thousand Year Journey of Tobias Parker with special focus on the story of the Spear of Longinus. Nothing makes much sense in Tobias Parker’s life. He walks an ever-tightening circle through San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, where foxes fall out of trees, parachutes drop from the skies and mysterious boxes appear unannounced. Tobias is determined to fulfill his family’s curious thousand year destiny, but the obstacles seem insurmountable. Is there anyone out there to help him? When screenwriter Tobias Parker discovers that every family on Earth is here to accomplish a particular task, he becomes determined to fulfill his family’s destiny. He learns that a unique battle is passed through the generations from father to son and mother to daughter, and that once the mission is fulfilled the family takes its place in a kind of celestial jigsaw puzzle. As Tobias embarks on his quest, his…

$15 cover charge; $5 for students/musicians/low income. This stellar trio is playing several dates around the Bay Area in early September, celebrating the release of the acclaimed cd, “Introspection” (Jazzheads) With Introspection, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and bassist Harvie S present a captivating album of classic material presented in rare versions for guitar trio. The album features great, often underplayed pieces by iconic jazz composers: Thelonious Monk (“Introspection”), Billy Strayhorn (“Blood Count”), Joe Henderson (“Serenity”), Tadd Dameron (“Focus”), Kenny Dorham (“Asiatic Raes”), George Shearing (“Conception”) and Neal Hefti (“Repetition”). With Roni having such a distinctive way in Brazilian music, the guitarist also added to the mix a pair of lilting pieces by Baden Powell (“Deixa”) and Ary Barroso (“Pra Machucar Meu Coração”). Rounding out the selection is an unsung number from the Jerome Kern songbook, “Nobody Else But Me.” Introspection brims with subtly insistent swing and insinuating melodies, the rapport between…

Sharon Doubiago notes: Wild Ocean Press has published Bill Bradd’s brilliant book-length poem, “Continent of Ghosts”. He’s a great reader who has lived for decades north of Fort Bragg on the Pacific mouth of 10 Mile River and while well-known and active there as a poet, he’s barely known elsewhere. Sharon Doubiago, on the other hand, is widely known in literary and feminist circles particularly. Sharon received her BA and MA degrees in English from California State University, Los Angeles. With the exception of two American Literature classes that taught H.D., Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, William Carlos Williams, Jack Hirschman, the Donald Allen New American Poetry Anthology, etc., she was educated by New Formalists who taught their aesthetic as the only aesthetic. Upon graduation she made the vow never to be a poet. The vow lasted five years. She dropped out, became an at-home countercultural mother, an anti-war activist and a Joycean…

$10-20 suggested donation; $5-10 for students / musicians / low income. Nashville Honeymoon’s music is a modern reworking of the classic country sounds of the 50s and 60s. Their songwriting draws on country, rockabilly, and honky tonk traditions. Hank and Lynne bring the best of traditional country duets to life, reminding listeners of George and Tammy, Loretta and Conway, Porter and Dolly, and Waylon and Jessi. Born in a school auditorium in Berkeley, California and nurtured in live music venues on both sides of the Bay, Nashville Honeymoon is led by Hank Maninger and Lynne Maes, whose shared love of country music led to a creative partnership onstage and off. Hank and Lynne’s first (rather unassuming) performance together took place on stage at their son’s elementary school. This sparked a musical collaboration that has since brought them to venues ranging from iconic tiki bar Forbidden Island to San Francisco’s Great…

$10 suggested donation; $5 for students / musicians / low income. Don’t you just know it? Piano professor Macy Blackman’s got the rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu, and is feeling strangely good! Why wouldn’t he, with bassist Bing Nathan sharing the stage, letting the good times roll?

Genny Lim will share the bill with Jerry Ferraz today. Her work as a playwright, poet and performing artist has been widely respected in San Francisco and further afield for four decades. Who’s that trumping over my bridge??? Jerry Ferraz reads his Trump poem, completed!   [arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSLXyaE5Dwk” /]

$20 cover charge. $10 for students / musicians / low income. Jason Hayashi – tenor saxophone Andrew Weitz – piano Jelani Banfield – bass Ryan Higley – drum Jelani Banfield is a formidable voice on bass already at the age of 20… Now a bona fide veteran (i.e., a sophomore) in Sam Clam’s Disco and its “Jazz, Roots & American Music” Bachelor’s of Music program, he’ll bring three equally young confederates from SFCM to constitute a jazz quartet for your pleasure. Given that the musicians tonight are under the age of 21, please don’t BYOB tonight. Thanks! We have juices and bubbly water on hand for you, and complimentary food for all at the break, from Glen Park’s own Cheese Boutique across the street from the bookshop.

$20 cover charge; $10 for students/musicians/low income. Traveling out of New York City, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur, bassist Harvie S. and drummer Sylvia Cuenca join forces with San Francisco pianist David Udolf and vocalist Sherri Roberts for two sets of jazz! Guitarist Roni Ben-Hur– born in Israel in 1962 but a longtime American citizen, based in New York City—has recorded more than a dozen albums as leader or co-leader. Known for his sweet tone, infectious rhythm, lush harmonies and innovative improvisation, Ben-Hur effortlessly straddles the world of straight ahead jazz and the realm of samba jazz, evidenced by his work with masters in both fields, from pianist Barry Harris to vocalist Leny Andrade. His work has consistently earned him accolades from prestigious media outlets. The New York Times praised his “crisp, fluid style” and Time Out New York called him “a formidable and consummately lyrical guitarist.” The New York City Jazz record…

$10-20 suggested donation; $5 for students/musicians/low income. The volcanic creativity and technique of Grant Levin has been thrilling San Francisco jazz fans for the past decade and shows no signs of abating! Saxophonist Noel Jewkes, bassist Tomoko Funaki and drummer Mark Lee join Grant for two sets of bop, latin & straight ahead jazz.

“We were still in the boundless void, striped here and there by a streak or two of hydrogen around the vortexes of the first constellations. I admit it required very complicated deductions to foresee the Mesopotamian plains black with men and horses and arrows and trumpets, but, since I had nothing else to do, I could bring it off.”  ― Italo Calvin, Cosmicomics Lisa Mezzacappa, an avant garde jazz bassist with a quickly growing international reputation, is one of the leading lights of the San Francisco jazz community. Her questing intellect and curiosity have time and again led her to compose extended suites of music revolving around a literary theme, such as the recent “AvantNoir” project which employed a sextet to create a musical counterpart to the crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster. With her current project, she tackles the fanciful and quirky work of the brilliant Italian writer…

M + M + M + M 4 Poets at Bird & Beckett A mellifluous evening of poetry by Miriam Bird Greenberg, Margaret Stawowy, Melissa Stein & Maw Shein Win Macaroons, meringue & merlot will be served Miriam Bird Greenberg is the author of In the Volcano’s Mouth, which won the 2015 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and the chapbooks All night in the new country and Pact-Blood, Fevergrass. Recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Poetry Foundation, she’s written about the nomads, hitchhikers, and hobos living on America’s margins, and is currently at work on a fieldwork-derived manuscript about economic migrants and asylum seekers of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, she was a writer in residence at the National University of Singapore in 2017. Margaret Stawowy grew up on the southwest side of Chicago in the Back of the…

With the commencement of their second year, the sophomore class of students in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s new “Roots, Jazz & American Music” Bachelor’s degree program hosts the incoming SFCM RJAM freshman class and peers from colleges and high schools throughout the Bay Area in a monthly jam session! This is an exciting opportunity to watch and hear the development of young talent over eight sessions through the school year. No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.

$10-20 suggested donation; $5-10 for students / musicians / low income. Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar; Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals; Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals; Kenny Owen, drums. The Seducers have had a monthly gig at Bird & Beckett for nearly three years, playing classic, outlaw and honky tonk songs by the likes of Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Bobby Bare, plus originals and a few from left field. Look for the Seducers every second Sunday in San Francisco’s premier little bookshop/listening room. Bring a beer if that’s your inclination, but for one outing a month you’ll get a nice break from the barroom clatter that can sometimes obscure the beauty of these fabulous bits of American genius. You won’t regret it for a minute. BYOB and kick back. It all makes for a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening before returning to the working grind.

$10-20 suggested donation; $5-10 for students/musicians/low income. David Byrd, saxophone and vocals; Grant Levin, piano; Joe McKinley, bass; Dylan Garrison, drums. David Byrd is unique in his penchant for infusing a heavy reggae vibe into his bebop and modal jazz, though just as often he stays right there in solid jazz territory, always with massive respect paid to the influences of Charlie Parker & John Coltrane, Eddie Jefferson, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt and the whole body of Chicago and Detroit players…  He was born and raised on the musical mecca of 47th street in Chicago, where his uncle, Red Saunders was the drummer and bandleader at the famous Regal Theatre. On the same block of 47th and Drexel Blvd. where he lived, jazz greats like Gene Ammons played at the Southerland Hotel. Mr. Byrd went to the jam sessions that were hosted by Sonny Stitt at the Grass Hut on 79th…