jazz club! every Saturday night, when lights are low… Tonight: Bob Kenmotsu, tenor sax Ben Stolorow, piano Noah Schenker, bass Vinnie Rodriguez, drums Collaborating tonight on original tunes by each of the members of the quartet, and wailing on some perennial jazz standards!

Grant Levin, an extraordinary jazz pianist who surely ranks among the very best players in the business, plays two sets of music with Chilean bass player Ricardo Diaz.       Grant brings in a duo partner on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month, and plays in a quartet setting on the 2nd Saturday as well.   On these duo dates, you can always expect an afternoon of sublime interplay between two very talented musicians.

Zan Stewart, sax & stories; Keith Saunders, piano; Adam Gay, bass; Ron Marabuto, drums. Zan Stewart is a lifelong musician and award-winning jazz journalist. Keith Saunders, Adam Gay, and Ron Marabuto are all top-call SF Bay Area jazz artists. Together, the four made ‘The Street Is Making Music,’ the band’s debut release.  

Heshima Mark Williams presents! The Ways & Means Committee: Dr. Gary Bean, trumpet Michael Bush, alto sax Dr. David Ferrazares, tenor sax Art Khu, piano Mark Williams, bass Julian Hogan, drums  

Colleagues making jazz music for you. Live. Once in a lifetime. Two sets: 5:30-8:00 pm!  

4:30-6:30 pm: The Walter Earl Trio. 7:30-10 pm – The Seducers.  

Noel Jewkes, one of the Bay Area’s legendary talents in jazz, is featured this week with Grant Levin’s quartet.  Chris Amberger on bass and Jaz Sawyer on drums guarantee a deep and swinging evening of jazz. Jazz club is what we call our Saturday night shindig.  $10 at the door.  Best ten bucks you could spend on a Saturday night! Featured saxophonist Noel Jewkes was born in Utah in 1940 and migrated to San Francisco as an adult to become one of the most revered local masters of the jazz saxophone, but only after playing for years, from the age of 12, in the family swing orchestra headed by his mother and father. The Jewkes Orchestra traveled widely in the region, delivering a swinging and danceable beat to audiences of hip Indians, farmers and city slickers in rural assembly halls, lakeside resorts and downtown hotels. Talented beyond measure on piano…

  The Don Alberts Quartet with Ian Carey, trumpet Stu Pilorz, trombone Aaron Cohn, bass Top flight bebop, standards and originals… with guest Jeff Kaliss reading some of Don’s poetry Don Alberts is a triple threat, as a jazzman, poet and novelist. Add jazz historian for his valuable compilation of oral interviews called Diary of the Underdogs: Jazz in the 1960s in San Francisco. Born and bred in the Bay Area, with a long stint on the Portland jazz scene, he was house pianist at Jimbo’s Bop City in the early 1960s, played Pearls in North Beach, Ronnie’s Soulville in the Fillmore, and all manner of other clubs up and down the coast.  A key figure in jazz piano as it’s been played in these parts for five decades!

Smith Dobson, tenor sax Jack “Tone” Riordan, guitar Miles Wick, bass Timothy Angulo, drums. Timely and timeless jazz classics by Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington.

Scott Foster, guitar, and Vinnie Rodriguez, drums join bassist Don Prell on the bandstand. Always something new under the jazz sun!  

Jerry Ferraz hosts our twice-monthly poetry series. Buford Bunton and Steve Carolan feature tonight, followed by an  open mic. Bring something to read! Don’t write poetry? You can always bring the work of a favorite poet to share. Of course, poets love an audience, so you can come as that if you wish! All welcome…  

Shel Silverstein — yes, the one famous for Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree — wrote hit songs for Johnny Cash, Dr Hook and The Medicine Show, Marianne Faithful, Bobby Bare and Willie Nelson, among others. In fact, he helped put together the band Dr Hook and the Medicine Show as a vehicle for his songs. San Francisco’s premier country music singer/songwriter and bandleader Misisipi Mike Wolf, invites Rik Elswit (guitarist for Dr Hook and friend of Silverstein), Gayle Lynn, The Shut-Ins and Maurice Tani to join him at Bird & Beckett to sing some of their favorite Shel songs and a few originals, too. Don’t miss out on Bird & Beckett’s burgeoning Sunday night series.  We’re calling the series Canyon Moonlight and it features bands sharing drummer Randy Odell on the first Sunday of the month (Eric & the In Crowd, EaR Candy,…