Right around the 4th of July, we always invite in the Buena Vista Jazz Band, and it’s always a delight. Darlene Langston is featured on vocals! Chris Bradley, trumpet John Hunt, trombone & vocals Don Neely, clarinet Si Perkoff, piano Joe Kyle, Jr., bass Greg Gotelli, drums

Live on KPFA! BAJABA SHOWCASE & the healing magic of Poetry, Jazz & the Fire of WordSong Live on www.KPFA.org with members of AVOTCJA & MODUPUE Bay Area Blues Hall Of Fame Jazz Group Of The Year 2010 & 2005 SANDI POINDEXTER (Violin) FRANCIS WONG (Sax & Flute) VAL SERRANT (Steel Drum & Djembe) RAUL RAMIREZ (Multi-Percussion) AVOTCJA (Poet/sm. Multi-Percussion) it’s gonna be magical … come to the studio and share the vibe!!! or listen live!!! SATURDAY JULY 1st at 11PM   Live in the Studio of Listener Sponsored KPFA 1929 Martin Luther King Jr. Way Berkeley, CA 94704 www.kpfa.org KPFA 94.1FM KPFB 89.3FM www.Avotcja.org

Throughout a career that has included touring the United States and Europe with rhythm-and-blues legend Hank Ballard and nearly a quarter century at the helm of a powerhouse blues combo called Blue Saloon, boogie woogie and blues pianist and vocalist Wendy DeWitt always worked with a bass player, except when doing the occasional solo piano gig. Then one night when her bassist didn’t show up for a club engagement in San Francisco, she discovered she didn’t really need one. “Her left hand is as good as any bass player I’ve ever worked with,” veteran drummer Kirk Harwood says of her bass patterns. Noted for his stints with Clover (a band fronted by Huey Lewis that also included future Doobie Brothers guitarist John McFee), harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo, and slide guitar great Roy Rodgers, Harwood has been performing with DeWitt in a duo format for the past three years. DeWitt was…

Jerry Logas on sax, Alan Steger on piano, Bill Langlois on bass, and Mark Lee on drums…. that’ll get it!  

Eric Shifrin on piano Jeff Sanford on reeds Paul Smith on bass Randy Lee Odell on drums. Does it get any better?    

Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016) A newly annotated edition of a landmark 1926 collection of lumberjack song published by pioneering song collector Franz Rickaby, augmented by a biographical essay and additional songs. “Franz Rickaby was the first to put the singing lumberjack into an adequate record and was of pioneering stuff. … His book renders the big woods, not with bizarre hokum and studied claptrap … but with the fidelity of an unimpeachable witness.” –Carl Sandburg Gretchen Dykstra, granddaughter of Franz Rickaby and editor of this edition of his original 1926 book, Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy, will talk about her grandfather’s work and her quest to find the grandfather she never knew through a time and place she never experienced. Her biography of her grandfather, whom she called Frenzy, is included in this volume. ____________________ Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in…

Beginning June 11th in a duo with Kash Killion, Grant has embarked on an open ended sequence of duo, trio and quartet dates, every corresponding Sunday evening. June 18th, Grant’s trio included bassist Doug Stuart and drummer Michael Mitchell. Tonight, June 25th, a quartet with Francis Vanek on saxophone, Chris Amberger on bass and Jeff Minnieweather on drums. Jazz history is being made right here, right now.  

Vocalist Dima sings from the heart with a voice and style reminiscent of the early 1950s. She is known for her command of the lyric, beautiful, soothing tone and carefully chosen repertoire. Dima began to develop her style as a jazz singer while studying with Merrill Hoover, a well known jazz pianist best known for his eloquent accompaniment of vocalists such as Ernestine Anderson, Anita O’Day, and Mary Stallings. This rare opportunity set the foundation for her to establish her own unique approach to singing as she fell in love with the jazz standard. Known for her command of the lyric, beautiful soothing tone, soulful improvisation, and carefully chosen repertoire, Dima keeps alive the true art of the jazz singer. This afternoon, Dima is singing with a fabulous quartet led by the highly regarded reed player Noel Jewkes. The rhythm section features some of the best players in the business…

Swing Fever declares, “The music is our passion. Rhythmic, romantic, torrid and witty, we’re crazy for it. Tunes from the 1930s and ’40s have inspired Swing Fever for decades. We learned from the originators of the genre, which gives our performance authenticity. We not only play the music, we talk about it too – colorful stories, historical anecdotes, biographical sketches that revive the spirit of the people who created the music and the era which gave it life. We have the most experienced jazz players in the area, and our very fine vocalist Denise Perrier. Denise has toured the world, she is world-class.” Trombonist Bryan Gould leads this sextet, which includes Dean Reilly on bass and Tony Johnson on drums — two stalwarts of the Bird & Beckett jazz scene — plus the fantastic Charlie McCarthy on sax and clarinet, and Jeff Massanari on guitar. In Denise Perrier, “the voice…

  Viktorija GečytÄ— is a Lithuania-born jazz singer, based in Paris since 2008. For GečytÄ—, singing is nothing less, and nothing more, than musical conversation. She has toured internationally with the American bassist Gene Perla and his Go Trio (Sean Gough on piano and Jon Arkin on drums) every year since 2008, performing for audiences in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Edinburgh, Vilnius and other corners of the world. Bassist Gene Perla has had a long and distinguished career in jazz, notably including a half dozen years in drummer Elvin Jones’ quartet, during which time the quartet released eight albums, five on Blue Note Records between 1971 and 1973.

Dan Liberthson, a San Francisco writer of poetry books about baseball and animals, reads his latest poems, including series about birds and the Pacific Northwest. Charles Curtis Blackwell is a painter and a playwright as well as a poet, heavily influenced by jazz in all of his artistic endeavors. His books include “Is, the Color of Mississipi Mud” and he has produced several spoken-word CDs in collaboration with jazz drummer Billy Toliver. His paintings have been exhibited nationwide. An open mic follows, hosted by native son Jerry Ferraz, bardic troubadour of Eureka Valley. Our twice monthly poetry series takes place on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month.

At 7:30 pm: Pianist Grant Levin enters the second week of his new series of three dates a month. His third Sunday trio date features Doug Stuart on bass and Michael Mitchell on drums. An open-ended residency that will go down in the annals of Bay Area jazz history. Jazz as it is played in San Francisco in 2017.       4:30 pm Erik Jekabson plays jazz on the trumpet like nobody’s business, and his sextet for this date is packed with Bay Area talent. We’re pleased he’s bringing percussionist John Santos into the bookshop for the first time. A recording session has been in the works for some time, and is imminent. The basic quintet? Erik on trumpet, Matt Renzi on saxophone and clarinet, Dave Mac Nab on guitar, John Wiitala on bass and Hamir Atwal on drums.     At 2pm: erica lewis w/special guest David Brazil erica…

Fresh from the galactic expanse, the Klaxons are coming! The decks are clear, the power is on, the beam is focused! Playing hits from Robot Invasion and other sounds channeled from their vast universe of musical influences, picked up in a lifetime of travel along the radio waves. the grooves of countless vinyl records and the infinity of digitized wonder. Our terrestrial frame of reference defines what they do as jazz, but that hardly describes something we earthlings can only marvel at. And marvel we do! Henry Hung, trumpet Ian McCardle, keys Josh Thurston-Milgrom, bass Eric Garland, drums