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. This year, 22 musicians in their freshman and sophmore years. Amazing talent! For 100 years, the Conservatory kept jazz at bay. No longer! No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.

Mary Ratcliffe, Editor of the San Franciso Bay View Newspaper, says: “Leroy Franklin Moore, Jr., aka The Black Kripple, the Champion of Disabled People in the Media, loves the least of us. Who is more maligned, more ignored and downtrodden than Black disabled people? Leroy’s love is fierce and uncompromsing. He roars like a lion on behalf of his pride: ‘I am here! I am worthy! My life matters!’” And Wanda Coleman, one of America’s foremost African American poets, one of the great poets period, says: “In the tradition of History’s word warriors, Leroy Moore pens full-frontal confrontations that blast away the last nasty vestiges of Faith-based America’s biases against the poor, the disarranged and the different.” “Tongo Eisen-Martin’s syntax lands somewhere between Sphinx and Thelonious…through poem he makes spare, efficient, wild-eyed jazz…rubs mud and accountability into the pores of the zeros and ones in the glass and steel city. Throughout SOMEONE’S DEAD ALREADY,…

$10-20 suggested donation. $5 for students / musicians / low income.

$10 requested donation; $5 for students / musicians / low income. $20 if you can afford it and truly believe in the value of this music and its treasured proponents! Pianist Larry Vuckovich, having played throughout the years with so many of the jazz greats, has acquired an extensive repertoire of stories about these legendary figures. His vast knowledge of American jazz performance and its recorded history has given him unrivaled insight into the qualities of countless instrumental and vocal masterpieces. In this storytelling/commentary presentation, “El Vuko” will offer unique insight into gems of American jazz as well as great jazz from around the globe. You’ll hear keyboard illustrations, inspired recordings and tales of jazz musicians and the jazz life as only one steeped in the music from an early age who has performed at the highest level for more than a half century can provide. “If you’re wondering what…

$10-20 suggested donation; $5 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. Seriously! 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…

$10 suggested donation $5 suggested for students/musicians/low income Supercalifornographic singer-songslinger Maurice Tani pulls all the angst of life right to the surface of his songs. His redemption songs and his wry commentary on life in the sidestreets and cheap rooms of the American dream are never really overstated. Bassist Mike Anderson, with his years of experience with Maurice, is a resonant foil for the stories that unfold. San Francisco-born and bred, Maurice developed an ear for the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and such early on. In his 20s, he left for central Texas to work the country, blues and rock circuit from Austin to Dallas, playing five sets a night, seven nights a week for months at a time, and eventually making his way to New York City as the punk rock scene of CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City was exploding. By 1977, he was back in San Francisco,…

$20 cover charge; $10 for students / musicians / low income.   B3B4 is a long-awaited musical conversation between Bay Area jazz veterans Tom Griesser (tenor sax), Scott Foster (guitar), Kevin Gerzevits (organ) and Dan Foltz (drums). The band combines the soulful growl of the Hammond B3 organ, the resonant bite of the tenor saxophone, the bluesy fluidity of the electric guitar and the propulsive groove of the drums. B3B4 is heavily steeped in blues and bop, featuring a repertoire including works by Jimmy Smith, Billy Strayhorn, Neal Hefti and Miles Davis, in addition to their own compositions. Their performances range from mid-tempo blues to warm, intricate ballads to driving up-tempo barnburners, and they reveal the fluency and experience of the group’s members in a wide range of genres.

$20 cover charge. $10 for students/musicians/fixed income. Erik Jekabson, trumpet. Matt Renzi, reeds. Dave Mac Nab, guitar. Peter Barshay, bass. Hamir Atwal, drums. Towering talents of San Francisco jazz!

$10-20 suggested donation. $5 suggested for students/musicians/fixed income. Jules Broussard, saxophone Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Louis Sweatt, drums Derek Evans, vocals Jules Broussard. born in Louisiana, was organizing bands and playing lead saxophone for audiences in and around his hometown by the age of 12. After a stint in the US Air Force and then traveling throughout the US, Europe and Asia, Jules arrived in San Francisco in 1960, taking jobs at Bop City and Jack’s, playing ’til 1 a.m. and on weekends ’til 6 in the morning. In 1966 he went with Ray Charles’ band for a six-month run, and his seven-year tenure leading the house band at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater from that club’s founding in 1972 is legendary. Along the way, he worked with Carlos Santana, Boz Scaggs, Van Morrison, Earl Grant, Elvin Bishop, Art Garfunkel and Doctor Hook. He’s been a Bay Area favorite for nearly sixty years.…

                                            $15 cover; $5 for students, musicians, limited income.

$10-20 suggested donation; $5 for students/musicians/low income. 1947: When bebop was hitting its peak and American jazz was newly energized! Bird, Diz, Monk, Bud, Max, Kenny… Guitarist Scott Foster leads a superb quartet through the paces, tracing 1947 as it unfurled before a few galvanized souls in a nation narcoticized by a consumerist fog that blanketed the land.  In other words, a time much like our own! But with amazing music! Joining Scott are Danny Brown on tenor sax; Eric Markowitz on bass; and Vince Lateano on drums. Special guest Terry Tarnoff, North Beach novelist, joins the band towards the end of the first set to read passages from his novel The Chronicle of Stolen Dreams – a road novel and bildungsroman unfurling as Chicago blues, bebop and alien encounters shape the emerging mid-century modern America. David Amram, long-time collaborator with Jack Kerouac, says, “Terry Tarnoff is a writer whose every word,…

No charge. Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of Leaving Tulsa, (2013) and Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018), both published by the University of Arizona Press. She earned her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver and her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Jennifer teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Low-Residency Program and co-directs For Girls Becoming, an arts mentorship program for Mvskoke youth in Oklahoma. Of Jen’s latest book of poetry, “Bright Raft in the Afterweather,” Joy Harjo says, “We are adrift in mythic waters that hold the possibility of rebirth even as they float the remains of human destruction. We could be in San Francisco, within the…

$10-20 suggested donation. $5 for students/musicians/fixed income. Derek Evans on vocals. Todd Swenson on guitar. Marc Levine on bass. Ken Owen on drums. Soulville

$20 cover charge. $10 for students/musicians/fixed income. The steaming Mediterranean meets cool California, wrapped in the elegant saxophone of Noel Jewkes. Vocalists Kay Kostopoulos, Dima, Wanda Stafford and Valeriana Quevedo, fondly dubbed the “Salt ‘n Peppa Gals” and well known to audiences at Noel’s weekly showcase at Sausalito’s Seahorse Restaurant, take their turns at the mic through the course of two sets of exquisite jazz! Keith Saunders (piano), Chris Amberger (bass) and Mark Lee (drums) add their considerable talents to keep it swingin’!  

$15 cover charge. $5 for students/musicians/fixed income. Scott Foster, guitar. Lorenzo Farrell, organ. Bob Scott, drums. Three great musicians navigating the classic organ trio sounds of Jimmy Smith, Larry Young and other masters of the 1950s and ’60s.