The Prodigal Son Returns!!!! After 5 years! A night of Reminiscing and Live Cuban music with Sandor y Su Mecanica! Tonight, Sandor’s Mecanica features Ivan Camblor on tres  and vocals, Carlos Caro on congas, Yadier Noa on bass and special guest Nicha on trumpet, plus Sandor his own self on timbales. A favorite son of la jazz familia de la bahia, whose travels have taken him away to Miami, Costa Rica and Cuba these past six years, returns on a visit to reunite in music with friends old and new just in time to help the Bird & Beckett proprietor celebrate his 67th birthday! _____________________________________ Below, the March 2018 edition of Sandor’s Mecanica at Bird & Beckett – Sandor, second from right, with (left to right) Juan Ceballos (flute), Fito Reinoso (tres & vocal), Gabriel Navia (guitar) and Sandy Perez (congas)

Guitar madness is in store when John Schott joins Scott Foster for the late show at Bird & Beckett this Friday. Guitarist Scott Foster has been holding down our third Friday happy hour booking for many years, and tonight he’s doubling down with a second show in our late slot. He’s invited a fellow pluctrum-wielding genius, the inimitable John Schott, to share the stage. They promise a madcap quartet date for your pleasure, with two more wonderful musicians joining the fun: bassist Carla Kaufman and drummer Jason Levis. You don’t want to miss it! Two sets starting at 9pm $20 cover charge (cash please, sliding scale available if need be) byob Don’t miss Scott’s 5:30-8:00pm trio with bassist Dan Fabricant and drummer Brandon Etzler, either! You can grab a little dinner at Tekka House or another of our fine Glen Park gustatoriums from 8 to 9, then get back to…

Daniel Fabricant and Brandon Etzler, two fine jazz musicians, join Scott in a nice little guitar trio, on bass and drums respectively. You’ll enjoy a rich and relaxed ride through two ample sets of jazz standards and classics, bebop and the inimitable territory of Thelonious Monk. Scott Foster has been Bird & Beckett’s favorite San Francisco guitarist for more than two decades for good reason. Come and find out why! Our Friday happy hour shows (2-1/2 hours worth) are open to all, we just ask that you donate what you can to help us pay the trio. A twenty works best, but if that’s a real strain on your purse, then just donate what you can. We want everyone to enjoy the music no matter their economic circumstance. All the more reason for you to err on the side of generosity if it doesn’t wreck your budget. What you put…

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 Valois J. Vera, aka “Crip Lyrical”, is a Disabled Revolutionary, Poet/Spoken Word Artist and Activist based out of Denton, TX. His experience in and knowledge of Disability Justice, Culture and Identity is well noted. He has served on several social justice boards and commissions and has garnered many speaking opportunities including the University of North Texas, Fordham University and Azusa Pacific University. His journalism work can be found in New Mobility Magazine, Latino Rebels, and Rooted in Rights, while their poetry has been published by Spoonie Press, Mollyhouse, and in the anthology American Graveyard: Calls to end Gun Violence, Volume I (Read or Green Books). Their debut collection Crip Lyrics: the Unapologetic Poetry of Disability (POOR Press) is an illustrated collection of liberation verses guided by lived experiences and self-reflection. His second collection, I, The Revolution will be released…

San Francisco pickers, Trouble Town boil a hot pot of folk, bluegrass, swing, jazz and rock into a rebel blend of music with a big acoustic sound. The band’s musical chemistry and diverse influences have allowed them to pull from a deep musical well and make it a special stew all their own. The band was formed in 2019 from a more traditional 5-piece that included a banjoist and fiddler. When both players moved out of state the remaining members found that the resulting trio format of the core band opened a plethora of musical possibilities. Led by Western Swing Hall of Famer, Pam Brandon (AKA Belle of Belle Monroe and Her Brewglass Boys) on bass, with Forrest Allen (Dusty Green Bones Band) on mandolin, and Mark Ignatius (Burl Haggard, Boots and The Katz, Das Tapes) on guitar, the band worked through the pandemic by performing outdoors in parks and…

Paul Harding, whose brilliant and absorbing novel Tinkers took the world by surprise on its publication in 2009 by Bellevue Literary Press and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2010, will read at Bird & Beckett this coming Sunday from his recently published third novel, This Other Eden (W.W. Norton, 2023). Ten years in the writing, This Other Eden is richly imagined from the true story of Malaga Island off the coast of Maine, settled in 1793 by a former slave and his Galway wife. From that beginning, the multiracial community tended apple orchards, fished, did mainlanders’ laundry and found other ways to scrape by and flourish in many ways despite a severe and unforgiving environment, mostly isolated from the prejudices and violence of the mainland society. All that changed in 1911/12 when the mainland blue bloods, prosecutors of christian morality, officialdom and eugenicists decided in their wisdom and racist…

San Francisco journalist Denise Sullivan conducts a monthly series of conversations (the second Sunday of each month from 10-11 a.m.) with The City’s activists, educators, arts and cultural leaders and community workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books. Find the live stream 1t 10a.m. on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Use the “refresh” button at 10 a.m. if the stream isn’t not live when you first link to it! This month’s guest is designer, educator, musician and founder of Demonstration Gardens, Kasey Rios. As a public gardener, Rios has a vision for a greener city. But beyond gardening and fair use of public space, Rios is an advocate of  resilience work, community engagement and fair wages for all. From the Bright Sounds Apprenticeship Program, training future sound and recording engineers at Hyde Street Studios to the annual…

Pianist Ken Cook returns with his quartet for two sets of jazz. Rob Sudduth, saxophone Ken Cook, piano Doug Miller, bass Kendrick Freeman, drums Here’s evidence of his last Bird & Beckett quartet date, on January 13, 2023:

Born, raised and based in Los Angeles, electric 6-string bassist and composer Steuart Liebig has been a pillar of the new music scene there for decades, prolific in his explorations of modern creative jazz and free improvisation, as well as third stream and classical music. As a young player in the late 1970s, he played rhythm guitar in Les McCann’s soul jazz band, contributing to four McCann albums, and in the mid- to late 1980s he could be found working with Nels Cline in their fusion band BLOC and in Julius Hemphill’s band alongside Alex Cline and Bill Frisell. Countless associations and projects have followed. Here’s an enlightening article from JazzTimes magazine delving into his work ca. 2001. Liebig’s trio at Bird & Beckett tonight, with Bay Area improvisers Garth Powell on drums and Phillip Greenlief on saxophone, builds on past encounters among the three to forge something original and…

Always a good time when Eric attracts the In Crowd to Bird & Beckett! He’s here with a fresh band on the second Friday of every month. This time out, this is the fabulous band: Eric Shifrin, piano Willie Perez, guitar Joe Kyle Jr. bass Jason Hanson drums BYOB and a twenty for the band if you can manage it! Donations are voluntary, though necessary to support our determination to pay a decent guarantee regardless of audience turnout or financial enthusiasm. Be as enthusiastic as your pocketbook can manage, and as the music excites & pleases. Thanks for supporting live jazz in San Francisco in 2023! Mark your calendar now for the 2nd Friday in July, when he’ll be back with Nancy Wright on saxophone, Bing Nathan on bass and Mark Lee on drums. Here’s Eric’s last outing, the second Friday of April:

Three long-time friends and colleagues converge to share their work. Art Beck will be reading from his latest book, Angel Rain, Poems 1977-2020 (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2022). He received the Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation for his book Opera Omnia Luxorius, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone (Otis Books/Seismicity 2012). His Mea Roma (Shearsman Books, 2018) a “meditative sampling” of Martial epigrams, was a runner up in the American Literary Translators Association’s 2018 Cliff Becker Book Prize. His Etudes, a Rilke Recital (Shanti Arts 2020) was a finalist in the 2021 NCBA. Denise Low, Ph.D., is a former Kansas Poet Laureate. Her essays about surviving COVID-19 are in Jigsaw Puzzling (Meadowlark Press, 2022). She won the a Red Mountain Press award for Shadow Light: Poems. Other publications are the memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (Univ. of Nebraska Press); Wing: Poems (Red Mountain, Hefner…

Author and journalist Zarina Zabrisky, well known on the San Francisco literary scene and for her political engagement since about 2010, has been based in Odesa, Ukraine since the early months of the Russian invasion. She will share photos and writings this evening, and will engage with the audience to answer their questions on the war and its human dimensions. Originally from the USSR, her childhood was split between summers in Ukraine and winters in Russia. After relocating to San Francisco, she worked in various literary genres, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is the author of five books, including the novel We, Monsters. As a journalist, Zabrisky has contributed to numerous publications, covering topics ranging from politics to culture and social issues. After the Russian invasion, she moved to Ukraine to report directly from the front lines. Based in Odesa, Zabrisky has traveled extensively across the war-torn country, contributing…

  Scott Foster’s CMC jazz combo performs 5-6pm followed by a jam session hosted by the Keith Saunders Trio. Your voluntary contributions help us pay a stipend to the student musicians and a fair guaranteed wage to the members of the trio. The Community Music Center has been teaching music to San Franciscans, young and old, for more than a century, and its jazz ensembles are coached by a dedicated faculty drawing from many of the City’s finest musicians.   The trio: Keith Saunders, piano Ollie Dudek, bass Ron Marabuto, drums The jam session is open to all non-professional players, though no players will be chased away due to their professional status! We appreciate you sharing your talents and experience! No charge to play or attend, although audience donations are gratefully solicited to help pay an honorarium to the students performing in the opening combo and a guaranteed wage to…

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…