most events start at 7:30, doors at 7:20. byob. for reservations/information, call the shop at 415-586-3733. cover charge is typically $20 to $25 — cash, please! Saturday, Sept. 24 – 7:30pm jazz club goes roots reggae for one glorious night! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlW23PtWLB0 The Baytals Safaa Modir, guitar Connor Sablan, keyboards Russell Vazquez, bass Hafez Modirzadeh, tenor sax Keshav Batish, drums Sunday, Sept. 25 at 5pm – Rudi Mwongozi solo piano home on a visit to family, from NYC at 7pm – Vince Lateano’s Doggone Jazz Jam Session with Ben Stolorow & Peter Barshay _________________________ can’t make it down to the shop? you’re missing out on a good thing! but you can usually catch the livestream on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Please donate to help us pay the musicians! A recurring monthly donation can give you unlimited guilt-free consumption of the stream and our sincere gratitude. Bird & Beckett guarantees…

Bob Kenmotsu, tenor sax Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Tony Johnson, drums Catch the show here:

Art Hirahara, piano John Wiitala, bass Tim Bulkley, drums $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please) Doors open at 7:45pm BYOB Reservations: 415-586-3733 Livestream on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Please donate to help us pay the musicians! Art Hirahara is a jazz keyboardist and composer based in New York City. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Art moved to New York in 2002 to be challenged by its pool of world-class musicians. There he has honed his craft, performing in a wide range of musical situations ranging from straight ahead standards to time cycle-based progressive jazz to working with singer/songwriters. Art has had the privilege to perform with Don Braden, Stacey Kent, Freddy Cole, Akira Tana, Rufus Reid, royal hartigan and many others. He has performed around the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East and extensively around the United States. As a bandleader, he has released seven recordings…

Poets converge at Bird & Beckett tonight, 9/21, to honor Gregory Corso, reading from The Golden Dot: Last Poems, 1997-2000, edited by Raymond Foye and George Scrivani, is newly published by Lithic Press. Co-editor Scrivani will join Scott Bird, Neeli Cherkovski, Agneta Falk, Sarah Menefee and Tate Swindell to read from the book, and to contribute poems of their own in tribute to this key figure in modern American poetry. Nothing can rival the experience of being at the reading with poets that knew Corso as a friend and colleague. But if you simply can’t, we encourage you to take in tonight’s reading in the live stream that’s to be found at 7pm on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and value what Bird & Beckett puts on offer there, please donate to help us pay an honorarium to the participating…

intimate conversations in jazz Mas Koga, saxophones & flutes Frank Martin, piano Peter Barshay, bass Bryan Bowman, drums $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please) Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show BYOB reservations, call 415-586-3733 Tonight’s show can also be found on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians!

No charge. Donations appreciated! Live in the shop! The live stream can be found on our Facebook page or YouTube channel The Oaktown Jazz Workshops at Jack London Square have been cultivating and training young talent for three decades now. Recent alumni of the program come to Bird & Beckett on Sunday, October 2nd at 5pm to perform as the Oaktown Jazz Workshops’ Youth Mentors. At right, OJW Youth Mentors Jordon Dabney – tenor saxophone Maximilian Ehrhardt – trumpet Anthony Mills-Branch – bass Pepe Tekpa – drums This quartet shows how early training, talent, intense study and a strong community-based environment like the OJW can combine to produce the next generation of jazz giants. Oaktown Jazz Workshops employs a cascading mentorship model, where “near-peers” comprised of OJW alumni serve as inspiring Youth Mentors for the incoming, younger musicians.  Visit the Oaktown Jazz Workshops website at this link.      …

LEVITATOR textured & ferocious music Safa Shokrai, bass Kjell Nordeson, drums Darren Johnston, trumpet $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please) Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show BYOB reservations, call 415-586-3733 Tonight’s show can also be found on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians!

After Thursday evening’s blowout, we sweep up, and it’s back to jazz as usual! jazz in the bookshop every Friday since 2002, twenty years and counting… Scott’s been holding on the gig ever since we started. THE SCOTT FOSTER TRIO a cool vibe Scott Foster, guitar Sam Reider, accordion Daniel Fabricant, bass Scott has been on the job since jazz in the bookshop became a weekly thing at Bird & Beckett, way back in late 2002… next month we’ll mark twenty years of Friday shows! In all those years, we’ve only been without jazz on Friday evening twice. Come out tonight for a unique and very special trio date. And mark your calendar now to join us for Scott’s next date, October 21st, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of jazz in the bookshop. You can count on Scott to bring a whole new band and a whole new concept, at…

Celebrate Glen Park! Bird & Beckett throws a free party for the neighborhood on the Third Thursday of Every Third Month, and we always celebrate a local star who helps make Glen Park the charmed place that it is! This time out, the spotlight is on Marian Dalere. Marian’s mom, Glory, founded the oldest business in the neighborhood — Dalere’s Beauty Salon — which opened in 1968 and is still going strong under Marian’s steady hand. That’s Marian, her mom and Mayor London Breed in the “featured” photo above, when the Mayor came out to Glen Park in 2018 to celebrate the shop’s 50th anniversary. And here, at right, is Marian with the Mayor, flanked by her brothers Dave and Santos Glory is still doing well, and is well cared for by Marian and her brothers in Glory’s house on Chenery Street. Dalere’s Salon opened in the space that now…

Fisk is luminous and loud, lucid and soft, driven and wandering. Shuck takes no prisoners, but isn’t looking to take any anyway. That’s the way it is in poetlandia… Do zoom by. Kim hosts a zoom reading on Bird & Beckett’s behalf twice a month, 2nd and 4th Thursdays. The 2nd Thursday features two poets, typically, with an open mic following. The 4th Thursday is all open mic, every time out. As much fun as a body can have in front of a computer. It’s a fabulous community of poets that’s developed over the past couple of years. Do come! Brett Benson tirelessly helps make it happen, in zoom terms. We’ll post the appropriate links before the appointed hour.

Passing through from NYC, the unique vocalist/composter Akiko Pavolka brings a quartet to Bird & Beckett featuring multi-reed player Matt Renzi (who has one foot in San Francisco, another in NYC and a third in Rome). Bassist Matt Pavolka travels with Akiko for the date; drummer Mark Ferber was born in the Bay Area, but is based in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. Matt has been playing with Akiko in her groups for over 20 years, and hosts her here at Bird & Beckett for this performance. Matt can be heard on her trio album “Begin Again” with bassist Matt Pavolka, as well as on her House of Illusion album “Trust Aqua” in a larger group that includes guitar, synthesizer & keyboards, and percussion. Akiko Pavolka, vocals/piano Matt Renzi, sax/clarinet/double-reeds Matt Pavolka, bass Mark Ferber, drums $20 cash cover charge doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show byob reservations, call…

Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn Dave Ellis, saxophones Matt Clark, piano Ruth Davies, bass Deszon X Claiborne, drums $25 cash cover charge Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30pm show BYOB Reservations, call: 415-586-3733 Tonight’s show can also be found on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians! Dmitri’s coming, one of the road warriors, in a major way one of our own… Here, he’s playing with four top Bay Area-based jazz musicians — tonight at Bird & Beckett, tomorrow at the Sound Room and then a quick run down to Seaside near Monterey before jamming back up the road to a string of dates in the Pacific Northwest, where he’s made his home since 2015 in Centralia, Washington. Born on Christmas Day in 1965 in Nashville, Tennessee, raised in Columbus, Georgia…

Erik Jekabson, trumpet and flugelhorn Matt Zebley, alto saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Owen Clapp, bass Smith Dobson V, drums Two masterful horn players with a fabulous rhythm section. What’s not to like? Standards, bop, post bop, originals. Matt Zebley crosses the Bird & Beckett stage for the first time tonight, and we’re more than pleased to have him. The other players? Significant figures on the San Francisco jazz scene. A quintet to be reckoned with. This is jazz as it’s played in San Francisco and environs ca. 2022! $25 cash cover charge. BYOB. Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show. Reservations: 415-586-3733 Also streamed live on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians!  

Caroline Cabading, vocals Jonathan Bautista, saxophone Ben Luis, bass Harold Ohashi, drums Vince Khoe, keyboard Chris Planas, guitar $25 cover charge (cash at the door, please) Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show. BYOB Reservations: Call 415-586-3733 Also streamed live on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream and stick around for more, donate to help us pay the musicians! The Autonomous Region plays kul jazz, putting a kulintang spin on jazz standards and original compositions. The group, led by vocalist Caroline Cabading, was founded in 2015 as the house band for the Club Mandalay, a pop-up jazz club in the International Hotel Manilatown Center on Kearny & Jackson Streets, just off Columbus Avenue, in San Francisco’s North Beach/Chinatown district. The Club Mandalay is a community-engagement project emphasizing family friendly and affordable live music, spoken word and dance presentations. …

Bird & Beckett features local poets with an open mic to follow on the first Thursday of every month. Jerry Ferraz and Michael Koch host. Fernando Martí is an Ecuadorian-born poet, printmaker, community architect, and activist based in San Francisco. He has been deeply involved in San Francisco’s struggles for affordable housing and the reclamation of the commons since the mid-90s, working with the Latinx immigrant diaspora of San Francisco’s Mission and Excelsior districts. His writing, illustrations, and altar ofrendas reflect his formal training in urbanism, his roots in rural Ecuador, and his current residence in the heart of Empire in an age of climate catastrophe. His work inhabits the space between ancestral traditions of place and the construction of a liberatory Latinx Futurism. He is a member of the Justseeds artists cooperative, and his writings have appeared in publications as varied as El Tecolote, Street Sheet, Geez Magazine, Milvia Street, and Shelterforce. _______________________________ Cyrus…

Drummer Vince Lateano leads the session with Peter Barshay on bass and Ben Stolorow on piano. A lot of great players have come out of San Francisco. Get in their number. Before the saints coming marching in! No fee to play. Audience, bring a $20 to help us pay the rhythm section. BYOB  

Also streamed live on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. If you like what you hear in the stream, and stick around for more, donate!

Neil Adler is one of a handful of chromatic harmonica masters who have followed the great Toots Thielemans in the past six decades. A notoriously nuanced and difficult instrument, very few have invested their time and talents in taming the beast and making it sing as well as Neil. He’s been a guest harmonica artist in performances worldwide from Canada to Belgium and beyond, has received a standing ovation down in Half Moon Bay at the storied Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, is an endorser of Seydel Harmonicas. And yet, he’s an award-winning, Bay Area treasure known to just a lucky few…  You’ll be in their number tonight. Larry Dunlap is at the top of the heap of thousands upon thousands of talented pianists, with a storied career reaching back through the decades. Soloist, accompanist, composer, arranger, Larry’s profile is particularly high from his work with singers Bobbe Norris and…

Drummer Tony Johnson brings a fine quartet into Bird & Beckett on the fourth Friday of each month. He’s a 63-year veteran of the local jazz scene, still a supercharged, swinging dynamo behind the kit belying his 80+ years of age. Tony left his native Australia and arrived in San Francisco in 1959, and was immediately working the City’s fertile club scene in an era when crowds were jamming the the Hungry i, the Jazz Workshop, the Black Cat, El Matador and the Cellar in North Beach, the Black Hawk at Hyde & Turk in the Tenderloin, the Tradewinds out in the Richmond District, the Say When on Bush. Tony played locally in those years with the likes of guitarist Eddie Duran, bassist Ron Crotty, pianist Flip Nunez, sax player Pony Poindexter, vocalist Bev Kelly (and can be heard driving the quartet with Nunez and Poindexter on Kelly’s great lp…

Walker Brents is back from his summer rambles… to plumb the tale of the Johnson County Cattle War of 1892… live stream only… You can find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support Walker and the stream.

Trumpeter Mario Guarneri enlists some of the best jazz minds of our place and time — Erik Jekabson (also on trumpet), Randy Vincent (guitar), John Wiitala (bass) and Akira Tana (drums) — to test the boundaries and depths of some of his compositions. Catch it in the live stream if you can’t make it to the shop, on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to help us pay the musicians!  

Eric Shifrin on piano and Paul Mehling on guitar co-lead a trio with bassist Dexter Williams grounding the whole affair, taking jazz on a spin through the French countryside with a generous number of  mischievous sidetracks. 5:30-7:00pm $20 cover charge; byob catch it in the live stream if you can’t make it to the shop, on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to help us pay the musicians!

Chicago percussionist and composer Tim Daisy has assembled a new quartet made up of some of the Bay Area’s finest musicians: Phillip Greenleaf on tenor saxophone,Kyle Bruckmann on electronics and double reeds;  and Lisa Mezzacappa on bass. The music consists of original compositions composed by both Tim and Kyle (who collaborated frequently when Kyle lived in Chicago in the early 2000s) and is inspired by many areas of experimental sound making including but not limited to free jazz, contemporary classical and noise. The new quartet will make its performance debut on Saturday August 20th at Bird & Beckett Books, on the eve of a recording session which is slated for release on Tim’s label Relay Recordings in 2023. $20 cover charge (cash please). Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show. BYOB. You can find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support…

Guitarist Scott Foster holds down the 3rd Friday slot at Bird & Beckett, bringing in a fresh project every time out, drawing from the stellar pool of jazz players that the San Francisco Bay Area can claim. Tonight, trumpeter Henry Hung steps up to pull a phat batch of pop hits into the jazz cauldron and discover what alchemical magic can be made. Bass & drums, tba. Audience? You, your neighbors and friends, current and prospective! $20 cover charge (cash please). Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show. BYOB. You can find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support the musicians and the stream! Come down to the shop for the best experience, or get a great taste of it in the live stream — to be found on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. Don’t fail to donate…

Guitar legend John Stowell and master saxophonist Michael Zilber have enjoyed a fertile musical relationship stretching back two decades, including three critically-acclaimed cds on Origin Records. 2015’s “Basement Blues” was a Downbeat “Top CD of the Year.” Zilber and Stowell have performed numerous times together through the years at leading venues on both coasts, but the pandemic hit pause on this ongoing and fruitful collaboration. Their duo show at Bird & Beckett is the first opportunity to hear the two of them together in two and a half years. Zilber was declared “one of the true masters of modern jazz saxophone” by All About Jazz.  Stowell “plays his amplified guitar as if he were surrounded by fine crystal… (a) slow burning, sustained energy,” said Downbeat. More about both on  www.johnstowell.com and www.michaelzilber,com. $15 cover charge (cash, please); byob and a mask. Doors open 7:20 pm for the 7:30 first set.…

Anthony Blea, violin Bob Crawford, piano Mike Arnold, bass Annette A. Aguilar, drums $20 cover charge (cash please). Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show. BYOB. You can find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate to support the musicians and the stream! Hi-Octane Latin Jazz from some of the great practitioners of the art! Annette left San Francisco for New York at a young age thirty years ago, well grounded in the music since childhood — from family traditions and Mission District experience in an era when Santana, Azteca and Malo were shaping a sound that shook up the nation. Thirty years on, she’s a major force in the Latin music scene back East, hyper-active with her StringBeans, her annual festivals of women in Latin Jazz, her spontaneous street corner sets outside Bronx bodegas, her tireless work in the schools, her central…