Pianist Grant Levin enlists master reed player Noel Jewkes, bassist Kash Killion and drummer Mark Lee for three sets of small combo work. Each of these players is a seasoned pro with a stellar reputation in the Bay Area. All welcome!  $10 cover charge; $7 for members of “jazz club!” ($75 annual dues).

R.I.P. Ornette Coleman, who gave us the shape of jazz to come

San Francisco Book Launch and Reading! Sons Of Noir: Murder and Mayhem by San Francisco North Bay Writers, edited by Ed Coletti and David Madgalene Contributors: David Beckman, Gary Brandt, Ed Coletti, David Madgalene, Pat Nolan, Jonah Raskin and Waights Taylor, Jr. Publisher: Round Barn Press, Santa Rosa, CA (June 7, 2015)

This week, Smith shares the front line with fellow tenor player Raffi Garabedian (once a Bay Area player who’s been plying his trade in NYC for a good stretch) with bassist Noah Schenker and drummer Jon Arkin providing the foundation, the pulse and much fine filigree.

It may be windy and foggy and cold outside, but the calendar still says May — and that means Spring. For twenty years now, Sherri has curated an intriguing set list of tunes befitting everyone’s favorite season — swinging from the familiar to the obscure, from Clifford Brown and Tad Dameron to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer and Blossom Dearie’s favorite, Bob Haymes. Oh, “They Say It’s Spring” — and with Sherri’s sweet turn of a melody and deft mining of a lyric, by the time you saunter out the door onto blustery Chenery Street, you’ll be singing of robins, daffodils and sunshine — freezing temperatures be damned!  The season isn’t over ’til Sherri’s sung.  This will be a date to revel in. David Udolf handles the piano chores, if you can call ’em that… though there’s nothing chorish about ’em, and nothing churlish about David’s playing.  Chris Amberger on…

Poet Latif Harris examines aging and the tricks memory plays on the instrument of the mind in his new collection of poems, to be presented at Bird & Beckett on May 31st at 2 pm. The book, Barter Within the Bark of Trees, has just been published by Duende Press — which published his first book some 50 years ago! — and comprises a combination of contemplative and meditational work.  The book works also as a study of the historical literary culture of the time, and encompasses his life as a poet beginning with work begun at the age of 33 when he discovered his “poetic voice” after months of automatic writing. Latif’s prior collection, Bodhisattva’s Busted Truth, was published by Browser Books San Francisco in 2006, and was reprinted in 2011. Beat scholar Gerald Nicosia noted for the 2006 edition of that book “…there is an authentic strangeness in the…

Alexandra returns to present her new collection of poems.  She’s an award winning poet, late of the Bay Area (she was a Stegner fellow here from 2006-2008 and a 2011 NEA fellow), now teaching at the University of Idaho. Her new collection is said to be “a chilling exploration of American progress and its consequences, featuring Sarah Winchester (the rifle heiress) and her unsettling Mysterious House, with cameos by Houdini, Annie Oakley, Oliver Winchester, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill and others.”