Katherine J. Williams reads from her new poetry collection, Still Life (Cherry Grove Collections, 2022). Katherine J. Williams, art therapist and clinical psychologist, was the Director of the Art Therapy Program at George Washington University, where she is now Associate Professor Emerita. Her clinical articles have appeared in The American Journal of Art Therapy and Art Therapy. Poems have been published in journals and anthologies such as Poet Lore, The Northern Virginia Review, 3rd Wednesday, The Poet’s Cookbook, The Widow’s Handbook, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. One of her poems was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Written with an artist’s eye, Still Life candidly and exquisitely explores moments of beauty, tenderness, doubt, and devastation. These poems from one life become a celebration of the human capacity for joy in its complexity. Readers will recognize themselves in Still Life, and will find ways to understand the…

Erik Jekabson, trumpet & flugelhorn Dave MacNab, guitar Dan Feiszli, bass Jason Lewis, drums A solid evening of standards and originals from four key players on the local scene. $20 cover (cash, please); byob. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Erik and his colleagues tonight demonstrate the depth of talent that has flowered in the Bay Area in recent decades. Keeping them working and resident in the Bay Area relies on having a healthy venue landscape. Thank you for supporting the venues that present the musicians! Bird & Beckett presents its music and poetry events under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which counts on the donations of individuals like you to augment audience revenues in order to pay the musicians fairly and cover operating costs. Please consider making a donation today. Only with a healthy donor base can we…

Luis Peralta, piano Brian Juarez, bass Ben Esposito, drums Spencer Hoeffert, guitar Pianist Luis Peralta, a young lion on the local jazz scene, is joined by three players who have all been making their mark in a big way in this post-pandemic era of live music. Bassist Brian Juarez is making his first Bird & Beckett appearance. Luis, Ben and Spencer have each crossed our stage on multiple occasions, making memorable music. Luis  is a 20-year-old native of Oakland who began playing piano at seven, embarking quickly on a serious study of European Classical and American Classical Music (Jazz). In 2017 he performed Alex Conde’s Concierto Para Piano Flamenco y Orquesta as a soloist with the Oakland Youth Orchestra. In 2019, Luis was awarded a full scholarship to study piano at the New School in New York City. He has studied with and performed with Bay Area figures such as…

Drummer Ron Vincent’s career notably includes seven years in Gerry Mulligan’s last quartet, 1989 to 1996, ending only with Mulligan’s death. Ron had graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1973, toured for six years then spent three years in Kansas City through 1982 when he settled in New York City. Seven years later, he was with Mulligan. He’s continued to be a key player in the New York City jazz scene; he works often as a sideman and has recorded for labels including GRP, Concord and Palmetto, where he’s been a producer as well as a co-producers for a number of projects. Ron was a member of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and Mulligan’s Re-Birth of the Cool Tentet from 1989 until Mulligan’s passing in 1996. He recorded four cds with Mulligan and has also recorded with Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Randy Brecker, Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Charlap, John Lewis and…

Sonoma County poet laureate emeritus Bill Vartnaw (2012-2013) has been publisher of Taurean Horn Press since 1974. He is director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk, an annual poetry festival founded by Geri Digiorno in September 1996. His latest chapbook is “The Nile to the Milky Way,” available online at sharpgiving.com Jack Crimmins’ poetry is concerned with people, landscape and spirit. His books are “Kit Fox Blues”, with an introduction by Diane di Prima, published by di Prima’s press, Eidolon Editions; “The Rust Life”, an experimental long poem; and “Dancing In The Sun Room”. He’s worked for many years as a licensed psychotherapist and lives in Sonoma County. An open mic follows, so please bring your work. The open mic always reveals talent and insight that can’t be predicted but is ultimately so very rewarding, for the poets and audience alike. No charge to read at or attend our monthly 1st…

Michael Wilcox and Sheldon Brown have had an ongoing trio project going for several years, usually with drummers Bryan Bowman or Alan Hall. Bryan isn’t able to make it this time, and Alan Hall has (sadly for his trio mates) relocated . . . So this time around they are delighted to note that they’ll be playing with the fabulous Dillon Vado. Dillon is a young lion of jazz, a triple threat on drums, on vibes, and as an extraordinary educator. Michael and Sheldon have put together a book of tunes that covers a lot territory: from original pieces of theirs to adaptations of classical pieces by Brahms, Faure, Machaut and Bartok, Bulgarian music, Choro, music of Herbie Nichols, and much more. They assert that they’re very grateful to be playing at “one of the Bay Area’s premier venues for creative music,” Bird & Beckett. Michael Wilcox – Fretted and…

On the last Sunday of each month, drummer Vince Lateano conducts a jam session for all comers, this month with pianist Parker Grant and bassist Robb Fisher sitting in for Vince’s regular trio partners, Ben Stolorow and Peter Barshay. Ben and Peter are away on assignment (getting traveling drummer Ron Vincent primed for his date at Bird & Beckett on Friday, June 2nd followed by two nights at Keys on the weekend). No charge to attend or play in the jam session, though your contributions are certainly welcome and appreciated to stake us to the trio’s guarantee. Most always a surprise or two, always a pleasure. It’s byob at Bird & Beckett, so if you want something to sip, bring it with you.

John Calloway, flute Murray Low, piano Fred Randolph, bass Ricky Aguilar, percussion Annette A Aguilar, drums, percussion, vocals $20-30 sliding scale cover charge (cash please!) BYOB, Reservations: 415-586-3733 We can never get enough of Carnaval! We’ve got a descarga’s cargo of rhythm for you in the bookshop with NYC drummer & bandleader Annette A Aguilar, a San Francisco native and a world citizen of the music with a wonderful band. Catch them Saturday night at Bird & Beckett!

Trumpeter Mike Olmos fronts the Tony Johnson Quartet tonight at Bird & Beckett, with Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass, evoking countless nights of cocktails & beers, bebop & ballads, burners & bossas, standards & jazz classics at Jay Johnson’s venerable, now-gone bastion of San Francisco Jazz! Man, do we miss it! Catch the flavor this evening at Bird & Beckett’s 20+ years running Jazz Happy Hour in the Bookshop! Bring something to sip and a twenty for the band. That’ll git it! Photos courtesy Dennis Hearne (Featured photo, Tony Johnson, courtesy Jessica Levant)    

If you’re of a certain age, you well remember the brouhaha kicked up by Led Zeppelin when Little Roger & the Goosebumps launched their was-gonna-be-a-hit-record-but-immediately-embargoed “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” back in 1978 on Berserkley Records, the little East Bay hit factory that gave us Earth Quake (“Friday On My Mind”), The Rubinoos (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), Greg Kihn (“Hurt So Bad”) and, the king of ’em all, Jonathan Richman, who went from “Road Runner” and “I’m in Love with the Modern World” to “Ice Cream Man” and enduring permanence in the rock firmament. Dick Bright alongside Roger Clark was at the core of Little Roger et al, the hardest working bar band in the Bay Area and up and down the coast back then. Dick’s been in the business ever since, grinding out a blue collar workin’ life in a tux as the bandleader at the Fairmount’s Venetian Room…

Kim Shuck hosts our zoomed 2nd and 4th Monday poetry readings – with featured poets and an open mic on the 2nd Monday of each month, and an all-open-mic format on the 4th Mondays. Tonight, it’s the all open mic version! Zoom in and bring a poem to read, or just come to enjoy the poets’ work! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211  

Kierkegaard the poetic philosopher. Long honored as a founding spirit of what came to be called Existentialism, Kierkegaard’s appeal is even more hydra-headed than this. His ruling inspiration is to bring his readers into a deeper sense of themselves as they encounter the themes and metaphors which appear so richly in so many ways throughout his writings. We come to see him as a singular exemplar of a unique moral passion, gifted with numberless insights which only grow more profound as the ages roll on… Walker Brents III regales us with 90 minutes of cogent insight into the workings of the poetico-philosophical mind in one guise or another most every month, though he travels the byways of the American west in the summer and skips a few for that. Tune in to his talk via our Facebook page or YouTube channel. No in-store audience except by special request. Once you’re…

Gail Dobson, vocals Kam Mombasser, guitar Aaron Cohn, bass Omar Aran, drums and special guests $20 cover charge (cash please) Reservations, call 415-586-3733 BYOB Gail Dobson, a native-born San Franciscan with a smoky, amber contralto, traces her performance history to legendary North Beach haunts including the Purple Onion, the Hungry i and the Jazz Workshop, as well as the Bach, Dancing, and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay. For 23 years, she’s been the featured vocalist for Ray Brown’s Great Big Band, and she leads her own combos.Says Gail, “I’m a Jazz Singer, Recording Artist, Vocal Teacher, Mom, Grandma. I’ve sung all my life and have shared this blessing with my first husband, pianist George Muribus, with my late husband, Smith Dobson, pianist/singer, and with my children, Sasha Dobson, a fellow vocalist, and Smith Dobson V, a drummer, vibraphonist, saxophonist. I’ve experienced first hand what hard work and dedication, mixed…

Rebecca Faulker is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Her work has been anthologized in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 and published in journals in the UK and USA. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. The poems in her debut collection, Permit Me to Write My Own Ending (Write Bloody Press, 2023) span generations and timescapes – from gritty, defiant explorations of a London adolescence, to haunting poems detailing love and adulthood in the US. Faulkner’s language and form dissects the emotional impact of historical trauma, navigating and sharply reframing nationality and memory, interiority and…