Trevor Watts, saxophone Karl Evangelista, guitar Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Jamie Watts, percussion $20 cover charge (cash or venmo at the door, please). BYOB Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Legendary English saxophonist Trevor Watts (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Amalgam, Moiré Music) and his frequent collaborator, percussionist Jamie Harris, visit the Bay Area for a special evening of free improvisation and avant-garde jazz. Joining them at Bird & Beckett are local firebrand Karl Evangelista (guitar) and multitalented bassist Lisa Mezzacappa. In the 1960s, the English saxophonist Trevor Watts permanently expanded the parameters of jazz, co-founding Spontaneous Music Ensemble and leading the equally groundbreaking Amalgam. In the early 1980s, Watts formed the first of several ensembles under the Moire Music banner, blending rhythms from Africa and Asia with jazz-steeped virtuosity, and performing on six continents. With a quarter century of collaboration under their belts, Watts’ duo with percussionist Jamie Harris distills 60 years of Watts’ immersion…

Scott Foster sends in the terrific Urban School Bebop Combo  to show what they’re made of. The ensemble will play a 45-minute set and then take part in a jam session hosted by the Keith Saunders Trio (Ollie Dudek, bass, and Tony Johnson, drums). The jam session is open to students coming from all directions, so take this opportunity to share the stage with top emerging talent and high level professionals with decades in the business. Adults, bring a twenty if you can afford it to help us pay the professionals in the trio leading the jam session, and to help us pay a small honorarium to each of the students in the featured combo. As a guitarist, composer and bandleader, Scott Foster has been a cornerstone of Bird & Beckett’s jazz programming for 21 years, holding down a 3rd Fridays residency, and is the Performing Arts Chair at Urban,…

Back in 1999, the year we opened Bird & Beckett, Jerry Ferraz was on the first poetry reading we presented, alongside Justin Desmangles and Dan Richman. He’s remained at the center of our poetry presentations ever since. Until now. Jerry has been saying for years that his “compass points North” and now he’s done it, moved on from the City That Knows How, now the City At a Bit of a Loss, to Portland & environs up in Oregon. His ex, Shelley, drove him up there with his two suitcases and a box or two of art supplies and notebooks and not a whole lot else (zen detachment,  you know) to cohabitate with their son Robin and infuse that troubled but city not without charms with his bohemian poet’s sensibilities. Lord knows, they need him! Born and raised in Eureka Valley, that is to say the watershed off Twin Peaks…

Pay what you can, and enjoy the process whereby musicians find their way among their peers, without specific preparation and  preconceptions, just years of learning their craft and learning to listen and learning to respond to the moment, to the tradition and to the next musical idea. It’s fascinating and vastly entertaining, and Bird & Beckett’s just the place to hang and take it all in. BYOB and help us pay the trio that hosts the session! Musicians, come out and enjoy the moment! Here’s an amusing article on the jam session tradition… https://nypost.com/2015/05/29/the-hot-harlem-club-making-1920s-jazz-cool-again/

Max Perkoff, trombone and piano Charlie McCarthy, tenor sax and flute Chuck Metcalf, bass Tony Johnson, drums $20 suggested donation; byob In the late 1950s and 1960s, 230 Jones Street in San Francisco was the headquarters of the San Francisco Musicians Union, Local 6 of the American Federation of Musicians, covering the counties of San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano and Sonoma, and parts of Trinity County. Local 6’s headquarters are now at 116 9th Street, and the struggle continues there to advocate for the interests of freelance, gigging musicians as well as those in the orchestras, theaters and recording studios who have more consistently enjoyed the benefits accruing to organized labor. At this juncture, it’s still more an aspiration than a reality, but the AFM is paying attention on the national level and…

Indigo Joanne Hotchkiss, to whom this reading is dedicated, was a co-founder in 1979 of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Co-editors Alice Elizabeth Rogoff and César Love co-host and participate in this reading, which will feature local poets who have poems in the current issue — Ed Mycue, Kitty Costello, Nellie Wong, Karen Melander-Magoon, Rafael Pineda, Antoinette Vella Payne, Cesar Love, Alice Elizabeth Rogoff, John Rowe, Ellen Frank , Eva Helene Stern, Aurelia , Lorca, Dan Richman and Phyllis Klein. Free admission; bring food and drink to share. Donations to support the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal are welcome and appreciated.

  Join us for a celebration of Robin Michel’s new collection of poems, Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press, 2023). Free. Refreshments provided. “It has taken nearly three decades to get this book ready for prime time,” says R0bin. “Earlier versions of these poems, with the exception of two, were written during the second half of my first marriage, the separation and the divorce. Compiling these poems into a collection is my way of honoring what we once had, grieving its loss and finding forgiveness. Although we considered ourselves adults, my first husband and I were children when we met, married and became parents.” Robin Michel (Pedersen) was born in Utah and moved to Fremont, California at the age of 17. After her first marriage ended, Michel returned to school to complete her undergraduate work at Saint Mary’s College, and later, a Master of Arts in Educational…

Vocalist David Gonzalez has pulled in a couple worthy associates from his late ’60s & ’70s gang — drummer Vince Lateano and bassist Peter Barshay — to celebrate a piano player who was central to the hip ‘n happenin’ latin jazz funk rock world of the Bay Area in the era, with young Matt Clark doing the duties on the keys… Bring your memories or your curiosity, or just your yen for a fun little jazz date sprinkled with anecdotes about a special time, and join the fun.   George DiQuattro was born on January 19, 1939 in San Francisco. He grew up in the North Beach neighborhood, went to Galileo High School, was a U.S. Marine veteran and became a professional jazz pianist. George was hired to join the band Azteca in the late 1960s, a Latin Rock collective of musicians ranging from varied backgrounds, cultures, and genres. Boasting…