Papa Joe Cohen can’t make it this Friday! There’s his brand new baby girl and other family matters… but bassist Adam Gay will handle the honors, putting together some top notch players to entertain you mightily, don’t you worry. He’s got sax player Lyle Link, pianist Keith Saunders and drummer Omar Aran on the bandstand with him, and a passel of fine tunes to play. A finer quartet, you couldn’t ask for!

Bassist Bishu Chatterjee, vocalist Vivek Anand, saxophonist Aaron Bennett and drummer Rusty Aceves explore a territory where zen-influenced jazz and Indian classical music interact.  

Finnish trumpet player Heikki Koskinen leads this ensemble, featuring Kati Pienimäki Schenker, vocals; Steve Heckman, saxes, flutes & clarinet; Rent Romus, saxes & flutes & kantele; and Noah Schenker, bass.  Heikki performs on piano, e-trumpet, tenor recorder & kantele. A poll winning jazz trumpet player in the 1970s in his native Finland, Koskinen came to the U.S. to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston and has had a long San Francisco tenure, composing, recording, teaching and collaborating on the bandstand with the likes of Hadley Caliman, Mark Levine, Joe Bonner, Benny Green, Larry Hancock and Michael Spiro.

Smith Dobson, highly regarded for his talents on tenor sax, vibes and drums, is picking up the alto for this date — the horn on which Charlie Parker made revolutionary jazz advances through the 1940s and 1950s. Charlie Parker, known as Bird, is the namesake of this little store, so you should know that we’re among the legions of people who revere the work he and a number of brilliant associates did in creating and developing the music we know as bop. We’re anxious to hear Smith and his associates grapple with Bird’s Scrapple from the Apple and all the rest of it.  Join us for two very fine sets of music. Your $10 cover charge helps us pay the musicians — a crucial task in these scary economic times. Along with you, we’re doing what we can to keep the culture healthy. Smith has assembled a fine band tonight, a…

Don Prell’s got a trio tonight, with Vinnie Rodriguez on drums and Jerry Logas on tenor — promising many some sublimely beautiful moments along the way.

Michael Marcus Duo “Remembering Morris Atchison Michael Marcus – clarinets Brian Ho – Hammond organ This concert, put together by New York clarinetist Michael Marcus, is a tribute to legendary tenor saxist Morris Atchison, an important player out of Oakland, Ca., working primarily in R&B and blues bands. Atchison toured with Bobby Blue Bland during the 70’s & 80’s & 90’s During part of the era, the band included the leader of this date, clarinetist Michael Marcus. Along the way, Atchison played with any number of great musicians including Johnny Talbot-Albert King-Little Johnny Taylor-Sonny Simmons-Muziki Roberson-Eddie Henderson-Sugar Pie DeSanto-Dottie Ivory-Art Lewis-Wayne Bennett-John Handy-Bobby Forte-Charles Brown-and many more artists of elite stature. Morris was awarded “Blues Saxophonist of the year” by the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame Michael Marcus got his start in the Bay Area in 1970’s playing in the local Bay Area blues scene with Sonny Rhodes-Hi TIde Harris-JJ…

Misisipi Mike is all over the San Francisco country/Americana scene, writing songs left and right, fielding more than a few bands and working in ten more as a hired gun & ringer. Not to mention turning out hundreds of stylish, eyeball pleasing show posters with an alacrity nobody can match — including a lot of your favorite Bird & Beckett posters. Tonight, he’ll take Glen Park on a hayride with Dillbilly — Denise Dill — and other special guests.  It’s another show in our burgeoning series of Sunday night “Canyon Moonlight Music” concerts.  7:30-10:00 pm on occasional Sundays. For as long as it takes to rebuild the Riptide bar out in the Sunset, or ’till the cows come home, whichever comes first, Mike will put together a show for you on the last Sunday of each month.   Read up on the Louisiana Hayride — the prototype for all this goodness…

Trickster & Deities:  Walker Brents discusses native american conceptions of god.

Cole Porter wrote a good portion of the most elegantly clever songs in the halcyon days of Tin Pan Alley. Drummer Vinnie Rodriguez leads a fine quartet through just a few of his most memorable numbers, and a few rediscovered chestnuts. Lyle Link – alto saxBen Stolorow – pianoAdam Gay – bass Vinnie Rodriguez – drums  

Filipino American composer and improviser Karl Evangelista is joined by a slew of Bay Area jazz stalwarts to present Taglish, a musical journey through 21st century immigrant culture. The project synthesizes jazz, American song, 20th century experimentalism, and Filipino folk melody into a sound that is at once universal and starkly personal. This will be the first presentation of the suite since 2014. Karl Evangelista: guitar Rob Ewing: trombone Jordan Glenn: drums John-Carlos Perea: electric bass Rei Scampavia: keys Francis Wong: saxophone Cory Wright: saxophone

Erik Jekabson, trumpet Kasey Knudsen, sax Keith Saunders, piano John Wiitala, bass Hamir Atwal, drums A stellar line up. Two rich sets. Don’t miss out! And be sure to look for the brand new CD, “Cheap Rent,” from the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which holds forth at Doc’s Lab under Erik’s leadership on Sunday nights.  A 17 piece big band that wails!

Trumpet player Dave Scott, bassist Andrew Higgins and drummer Omar Aran join guitarist Scott Foster for two sets of jazz standards and originals evoking the season that arrives on the heels of our Indian summer.  Get in the mood just five days ahead of the autumnal equinox. Scott has been a cornerstone of our Friday jazz dates since their inception in the autumn of 2002.  Thirteen years on, he’s still bringing us some of the most soul satisfying music we’ve ever heard from the Bird & Beckett bandstand. You can hear him here with some of San Francisco’s best working jazz musicians on the third Friday of each month.