Live jazz at Bird & Beckett started back in the fall of 2002… coming up on 15 years of Fridays.  And Scott Foster has been on the gig since the beginning. Bird & Beckett’s favorite guitarist, bar none. Tonight, as he does on the third Friday of each month, Scott has concocted a band to focus specifically on a nice slice of the jazz landscape. Over a 20+ year career, trombonist Alan Williams has played in a wide variety of styles with a wide variety of artists ranging from country rockers Drive By Truckers to tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith to quirky indie-popsters CocoRosie and boogaloo pioneer Joe Bataan. With a sound influenced by past and present masters like Dickie Wells, Lawrence Brown, Gary Valente and Ray Anderson, he’s created a passionate sound rooted in tradition. Alan currently performs with Funky Latin Orchestra (FLO), the Afrofunk Experience, Angelo Moore’s Madd…

Louise Nayer, retired CCSF instructor, will launch her newest book, Poised for Retirement: Moving from Anxiety to Zen, (Central Recovery Press, 2017). A unique narrative on a unique time offering solace to people nearing retirement, Poised for Retirement is not your parents’ retirement guide. It’s not a financial planning guide. Rather, it’s the story of an ordinary working woman reflecting on her life and career. Written with humor, compassion and poignancy, the book’s poetic prose is also inspirational, and the visualizations and breathing and sleep techniques offered at the end of each chapter are useful and easy to implement. In Poised for Retirement, Louise narrates her own process and achievement of a new and healthier life during a transition you may yourself be contemplating or may already have embarked upon. Louise will read from her book and lead a discussion. Refreshments and snacks will be provided, and there will be a raffle…

Lincoln Adler, sax Greg Sankovich, piano Kurt Ribak, bass Randy Lee Odell, drums

The Jazz Philanthropists Union presents… Darren Johnston, trumpet Miles Wick, bass Jordan Glenn, drums

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg and tenor saxophonist Smith Dobson join forces in a program of tunes by Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and  other masters of America’s classical music — including Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker! This will be a conclave of the highest order. Dobson, a multi-instrumentalist and a cornerstone of the local jazz scene, will be fresh back from Berlin. Goldberg has an international following, stemming from his early 1990s experiments with the New Klezmer Trio and manifold explorations in the years since — in such groups as Tin Hat, Clarinet Thing, Myra Melford’s Be Bread, Nels Cline’s New Monastery, Afterlife Music Radio, Go Home, Ben Goldberg School, and the 11-piece Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild. Bassist Rob Adkins will be here from NYC, where he’s particularly active on the trad scene, bringing another strain of jazz into the mix. Hamir Atwal is a key drummer, with incredible flexibility, subtlety and swing.…

Harvey Wainapel, reeds Adam Shulman, piano Peter Barshay, bass Sylvia Cuenca, drums Reuniting two old friends who have rarely played together in recent years, the Harvey Wainapel/Sylvia Cuenca Quartet promises an evening of fresh musical energy and material, with a mix of originals, “standards” and “ought to be standards!” Sylvia (who has played with Joe Henderson, Clark Terry, and Eddie Henderson, among many other greats) and Harvey (Joe Lovano, Airto Moreira/Flora Purim, Ray Charles) are thrilled to be joined by pianist Adam Shulman and bassist Peter Barshay, two of the strongest and most in-demand players in the Bay Area.

Sylvia Cuenca, a San Jose native who’s been a first call drummer on the jazz scene in New York City now for several decades, is passing through town and will play Bird & Beckett twice this week — tonight in a quartet with New York organ player Jared Gold and local icons Joe Cohen on sax and Jack Riordan on guitar. Friday, she’s back — in a quartet co-led by Bay Area saxophone legend Harvey Wainapel. with Adam Shulman on piano and Peter Barshay on bass. Sylvia got her start here in San Francisco before heading for New York City and putting in long, productive years touring in the quartets of saxophone titan Joe Henderson and legendary trumpet player Clark Terry, two substantial associations that speak for her talent and the high regard it’s brought her in a fiercely competitive environment. Organist Jared Gold was named a “Rising Star” in…

Ian Carey, trumpet Bob Kenmotsu, tenor sax Mark Levine, piano Robb Fischer,  bass Ron Marabuto, drums Fine, well traveled musicians right down the line, led by pianist Mark Levine — four decades plus playing at the highest levels of the jazz world, a dozen albums as a leader, two Grammy nominations, significant and satisfying bandstand and recording studio associations with the likes of Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Wallace Roney, Tito Puente, Milt Jackson, James Moody, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Fortune, Eddie Harris, Stefon Harris, Eddie Henderson, Conrad Herwig, Clark Terry, Ingrid Jensen, Charlie Rouse, Bobby Watson, Chet Baker, Philip Harper, Mark Murphy, Art Pepper, Julian Priester, Bobby Shew, Steve Turre, Madeline Eastman, Enrique Pla and Poncho Sanchez… with particularly fruitful and intense extended stints on the bandstand with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and sax giants Joe Henderson, Harold Land and Dave Liebman, and with latin jazz titans Mongo Santamaria,…

Seabop! Don Prell, leader, on bass, with Al Molina, trumpet, and Jerry Logas, reeds.  Drummer tba. Bassist Prell got his start in L.A. in the 1950s, traveling for several years as a member of the Bud Shank Quartet. He’s been a cornerstone of the Bird & Beckett Friday night jazz series since its inception in 2002, and leads a group here on the first Friday of each month.