CBop returns to Bird & Beckett to present their third EP, “Three’s A Charm” recorded at the Oakland Riviera by CarnyMusic Recording in late 2021 The EP is a nod to some of CBop’s favorite composers (Sonny Rollins and Burt Bacharach, to name two). They’ll perform two sets of music in what they say is their favorite San Francisco venue. We’ll trust them on that, and will be delighted to present them. Please come share these bright moments with us. Dan Keller – Bass Mark Secosh – Saxophone Bob Johns – Piano André Custodio – Drums Playing music by luminaries Coltrane, Duke, Monk, Bird and more! The quartet’s origins began in San Francisco as coordinated venue jam sessions that included noted luminaries of the jazz world. CBop prides itself on delivering and communicating groove with sophistication. The quartet has played festivals, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, openings, fundraisers, and corporate events. Above…

Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals Kenny Owen, drums The Seducers play the songs of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and countless other giants of classic and outlaw country music. Bring $20 for the musicians! BYOB, too!   Can’t make it to the shop for the show? You can view it from wherever you are on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. Please donate to help us pay the musicians and maintain the live stream! You’ll find instructions on the screen during the stream, and you can also call us for information on how to do it. Thanks for supporting the culture!

Over in the canyon, just up the street from the bookshop, the Gum Tree Girls Festival is slated for 10am to 3:30pm on Sunday the 10th, with live music, stirring oratory, informative history, food, drink, games and community camaraderie! You don’t want to miss it! With the Festival coming up in just a few days, they need volunteeers to help out! See the link at right! (Sunday, too, be sure to drop by Bird & Beckett after the Fest at 5pm for The Seducers, America’s favorite honky tonk band, live in the bookshop!) The Gum Tree Girls, you ask? In the mid-1960s, the Gum Tree Girls — Geri Arkush, Zoanne Theriault Nordstrom and Joan Seiwald, pictured here — and prior to that, in 1958, Minnie Straub Baxter, stood up and saved Glen Canyon from sporting a double deck, elevated “viaduct” expressway to the other side of Twin Peaks! Right over…

Bob Kenmotsu, tenor saxophone Ben Stolorow , piano Ollie Dudek, bass Vince Lateano, drums $20 cash cover charge Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show BYOB and a mask Can’t make it to the shop? Nothing’s like the real thing live! Ollie Dudek digs deep into the book of compositions by some of the greatest bass players in jazz, including Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, Charles Mingus, Wilbur Ware, Paul Chambers, Red Mitchell and Sam Jones. For the occasion, he’s called up a terrific quartet of experienced players well known to Bird & Beckett audiences, well prepared to dig into the material.

Julie Rogers is the author of three Omerta Publications chapbooks published pre-Covid that will be released on this occasion: Trading Fours and Sharing Breath, both written with her late husband, poet David Meltzer; and her own volume, Life on Earth. Her other books include House of the Unexpected, and “Instructions for the Transitional State.”  Two Tone Poetry & Jazz, a cd recorded with David Meltzer and saxophonist Zan Stewart, will also be available. Julie teaches creative writing and is the Director of TLC Transitional Life Care. Find her at www.julrogers.com. Peter Marti graduated from SF State University, studied at the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. was a member of the San Francisco-based poetry collective Birthstone in the ’70s, was a rock n roll singer in ’80s, and was part of the Wordland performance poetry group in the ’90s. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2002 and has been…

Ray Skjelbred, piano Marc Caparone, trumpet Clint Baker, bass Jeff Hamilton, drums $20 cash cover charge at the door Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show BYOB and a mask Can’t make it to the shop? Nothing’s like the real thing live! But if you want to catch it in the stream, look for it on our YouTube channel or our Facebook page. Donate to support the musicians! Chicago-born, Seattle-based pianist Ray Skjelbred returns to Bird & Beckett in the company of like-minded friends — three of the very best players the California trad scene has to offer. You’re in for an evening steeped in early Chicago style jazz on a rich program of originals and classic material. Wherever he’s been heard, Ray has been held in very high regard for the past five decades. His facility and imagination are unmatched, and his influences run deep — artists including…

Catch some jazz on the eve of the 4th! San Francisco’s august Mission District institution, the Community Music Center, is sending a group coached by reed player Charlie Gurke for a 5pm set on Sunday July 3rd, to be followed at 6pm with a jam session open to students and budding professionals led by famed drummer Akira Tana, with Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass. The Community Music Center has been a font of great local jazz musicians for generations–and has been teaching San Franciscans of all ages from all walks of life for one hundred years. The CMC ensemble, coached by reed player Charlie Gurke, on July 3rd will include: Brian Wood – alto sax Justin Willow – trombone  Patrick Gallagher – piano Paul Yago – bass Wen-Hao Lue – drums Next month, on August 7th, another CMC ensemble will take the stage. That one is…

New York comes to Bird & Beckett tonight! Richie Vitale, trumpet star, plays with local heroes Keith Saunders, piano; Eric Markowitz, bass; and Ron Marabuto, drums. Trust Keith and Ron…you want to hear this jazzman. Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:3-9:30 show. $20 cash cover charge at the door. Call to reserve a seat – 415-586-3733. BYOB and a mask! Can’t make it down to the shop for the show. You can find it streamed live on our youtube channel and facebook page. Born in Rochester, New York, on September 23 (also John Coltrane’s birthday), Richard Vitale played with drummer Philly Joe Jones at the early age of sixteen. After moving to New York City, Richie performed with jazz luminaries Joe Williams, Barry Harris, Joe Morello and Sal Nistico, with Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett, and with Sting and James Taylor. His experience with big bands has been no…

Dan Neville, vibes Brian Andres, drums Erick Peralta, piano Aaron Germain, bass Javier Cabanillas, congas $25 cash cover charge byob and a mask doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show Live streamed on our facebook page and youtube channel. Dan Neville fields an all-star Latin combo this time out at Bird &  Beckett. Over the past several years, he’s brought many diverse projects to Bird & Beckett and has made several extended trips to Colombia and Cuba, studying music and connecting with musicians worldwide. Highlights include studying with the Colombian legend Diego Obregón in 2018 and 2020; in 2020, he spent an entire year helping build a recording studio, recording various ensembles, writing music and collaborating. Dan was featured on the radio in Guantanamo, Cuba in January of 2019 with his album Tenerife. Dan has spearheaded two successful crowdfunding campaigns: One for the release of his debut album Tenerife…

Drummer Vince Lateano leads the session with Peter Barshay on bass and Ben Stolorow on piano. A lot of great players have come out of San Francisco. Get in their number. Before the saints coming marching in! No fee to play. Audience, bring a $20 to help us pay the rhythm section. BYOB    

Evidence Trio is an improvisational group whose points of reference are free jazz, dark ambient, and radio emissions from the early universe. Andrew Joron, theremin Kersti Abrams, sax and flute Thomas Harrison. electric bass Joining the bill is Ava Koohbor, Iranian-American electronic musician, visual artist and poet. Visit her website at avakoohborarts.com for samples of her audio and other work. Ava’s poetry publications include the chapbook, Triangle Squared  (Bootstrap Press, Letterpress Editions #1, 2014) and the book Death Under Construction (Ugly Duckling Presse / Bird & Beckett Ensemble Edition, 2019). Andrew Joron will also be introducing his novel O0 (Black Square Editions, 2022), a work of speculation, probing the unknowable. “In Andrew Joron’s O0, two novellas brilliantly intersect. Through a unique reworking of various New Wave sci-fi tropes, space-time is transmuted into ‘reshuffled narrative pathways, a collage of illogical facades and stairways that end in mid-air,’ leaving readers in the…

Eric Shifrin brings a Latin touch to the bandstand tonight, in a long-standing trio with bassist Paul Smith and drummer Raul Ramirez. $20 cover (cash, please!); doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show.  Bring a mask and something to drink, if you like. You’re in for a delightful evening of music. Catch it in our live stream if you can’t make it into the shop, but you really don’t want to miss the real thing, in real time, in person. Eric Shifrin learned piano as a child on his mother’s lap and turned professional right out of high school, gigging on both alto sax and piano to earn his bread and butter. He was composing and recording from the start, put in time on cruise ships, spent crucial years in Japan and by the 1990s was rooted in the Bay Area, where his movable feast of music embodied in…

Drummer Tony Johnson brings in a quartet on the fourth Friday of each month. Tonight it’s the 230 Jones Street Band, with Charlie McCarthy, saxophone & flute; Glen Deardorff, guitar and Al Obidinski, bass. Four veteran jazz players, and long-time friends, swingin’. $20 cash cover charge; byob & a mask. Find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page, and donate if you possibly can to support the musicians, the music and the venue! Tony hit San Francisco in 1959, fresh off the boat from his native Australia, ready and raring to go. He got busy in the North Beach clubs right away, recorded in 1960 with vocalist Bev Kelly in a combo with legendary saxophonist Pony Poindexter, pianist Flip Nunez and bassist Johnny Allen at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Street, played behind Bobby Short at the Hungry I. Tony played on the Ed Sullivan…

Guitarist Ed Cherry is in town briefly and brings a trio into Bird & Beckett with Adam Shulman on piano and Owen Clapp on bass. Call for reservations – 415-586-3733; limited seating. $20 cash cover charge. BYOB and a mask. Doors open at 7:20pm for the 7:30pm show. Ed Cherry moved to New York from New Haven, Connecticut in 1978 to play guitar with Dizzy Gillespie from 1978 to 1992 performing in Gillespie’s quartet and big band, and with Diz’s United Nation Orchestra, which recorded the 1989 Grammy Award-winning lp, “Live at Royal Festival Hall,” for Enja Records. Ed was with Gillespie’s group in San Francisco for an SFJAZZ date in 1991 on a bill opened by saxophonist Mel Martin’s Big Band — here’s a clip from Gillespie joining the Martin band for a take on Manteca that night, with Vince Lateano and John Santos in the band. Diz died…