Noertker’s Moxie CD release for the Billville trilogy Annelise Zamula – saxes, flute Brett Carson – piano Jason Levis – drums Bill Noertker – bass, compositions $20 cash cover charge. Doors open 10 minutes before showtime. Reservations, call the store at 415-586-3733. Capacity is limited. BYOB, proof of vaccination and a mask. Can’t make it to the show? Check it out in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate! Bassist/composer Bill Noertker has been active in the Bay Area jazz and avant-garde scene since the late 1980s. Since 2001, he has lead his own ensemble, Noertker’s Moxie, as a forum for compositions inspired by visual art, architecture, poetry, cinema, and sculpture. These compositions provide a framework for improvisation that is both melodic and textural; with an emphasis on creative, free-ranging interplay amongst the musicians. Moxie has released sixteen CDs on the Edgetone Records label, including the…

Al-Mutannabi Street in Baghdad, a nexus of booksellers for a thousand years, was decimated by a car bomb on March 5, 2007. Fifteen years on, poets around the world read on the anniversary of that sad day, to imagine a better world. The Shabandar Cafe on Al-Mutannabi Street, which opened as a cafe in 1917 on the premises of a printing press, was destroyed in the attack though later rebuilt. Five sons of the cafe’s owner, Mohammad al-Khashali, were killed in the blast. The Shabandar has been a gathering place for writers and intellectuals for generations. It continues thus. And the booksellers have returned to their trade. Time and again, culture has won out over the greed for power and for domination of the individual and the community. It will be ever thus. Diane di Prima wrote, “The only war that matters is the war on the imagination.” It’s a…

The SticklerPhonics is some special kind of Modern Micro Brass Band… Jazz, Groove, Funk and much more! Drums, saxophone and trombone? Why not? With each player in The SticklerPhonics, the concept of working as a unit is crucial. Playing in the pocket, giving each other space, getting the audience to move… Like nothing you’ve heard. Playing original music. Let’s DO this. Scott Amendola – drums/percussion/electronics Raffi Garabedian – tenor saxophone Danny Lubin-Laden – trombone $20 cash cover charge. Doors open 10 minutes before showtime. Reservations, call the store at 415-586-3733. Capacity is limited. BYOB, proof of vaccination and a mask. Can’t make it to the show? Check it out in the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate! We go to considerable effort and cost to bring you the livestream and we use your donation to help pay the musicians a guaranteed fair wage. No project better…

Agneta Falk, a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1946. She’s a poet, visual artist, translator and editor, who’s lived in England for thirty years where she taught Drama and creative writing. She was also a co-director of Word Hoard, a literature development agency, promoting writing in the community and organizing poetry festivals. For the past twenty years, she’s lived in San Francisco in San Francisco, USA. She’s has four volumes of poetry, as well as the co-editor of several anthologies, and is represented in many anthologies world wide. Her work is translated into many languages, and she’s participated  in International poetry festivals in Italy, Colombia, Peru, Iraq, Sarajevo, San Francisco, China, Switzerland, Vietnam. With the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, she organizes events to raise awareness of social and political conditions at home and in the world. She’s also a member of the co-ordinating commmitee…

Such a month, February. The careful, and the brave knew & know that there’s nothing like live taking in some live music and poetry alongside a few friends and companionable strangers. Audience capacity is 20 in the shop for the time being, so call ahead if you want to be sure of a seat, then wash your hands, check for your vax card, grab your mask and come to the little village that is Glen Park to enjoy another fine night of San Francisco culture in one of the City’s sweetest listening environments! Bring cash for the talent, as well as something to sip! It’s BYOB at Bird & Beckett. Catch our live streams on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate per the information on the screen if you can. The stream is a crucial artist/audience lifeline in a tough time, and the support of the home viewing audience…

Vince Lateano; Peter Barshay, bass; and Ben Stolorow, piano are the rhythm section for a jam session to conclude an exciting evening at Bird & Beckett, holding it down for the horn players that make it out and yielding their own instruments to those bold enough to ask! We’re making it a last Sunday of the month tradition. Jazz as it’s played in San Francisco in 2022! No charge, but any donations you can make to help us meet the rhythm section’s guarantee will be much appreciated! No live stream tonight. If you want to play, you can’t do it from home. And if you want to hear it, you’ll just have to come out down to the shop!

Three master musicians and an esteemed poet join together in honor of their late colleague and friend Glenn Horiuchi, born February 27, 1955. Horiuchi, who passed on June 3, 2000, was a key figure in the Asian American arts movements & companies that flowered in the San Francisco Bay Area and up and down the West Coast in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. 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! Saxophonist Francis Wong, co-founder and creative director of Asian Improv aRts (AIR), notes that Horiuchi “was a prime mover for Asian Improv aRts from our pre-history in the Asian American Movement until his transition. A role model and mentor for me and so many others, he played such roles as a musician, teacher, community organizer — most notably the…

JAZZphoria Quintet Jean Fineberg – tenor saxophone/flute Erika Oba – keyboards/flute/piccolo Nancy Wenstrom – guitar Jodi Durst – basses Jeremy Steinkoler – drums/percussion Bandleader and saxophonist Jean Fineberg has toured and recorded with Melba Liston, David Bowie, Laura Nyro, Chic, Sister Sledge (We Are Family)and was featured on Marian McPartland’s iconic Piano Jazz radio show. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Grammys in L.A., the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Monterey, Montreux, San Francisco and San Jose Jazz Festivals. Jean is the recipient of several NEA composition awards, a grant from InterMusic SF, several Meet-The-Composer grants and two composition awards from the American Federation of Musicians. To date, she has received seven artist-in-residence fellowships, where she continues to write the bulk of JAZZphoria’s material. Below, the full ensemble, from which this quintet is drawn… $25 cash cover charge; proof of vaccination and masks required. For a reservation,…

Drummer Tony Johnson brings in a quartet on the fourth Friday of each month Tonight, with a night dedicated to Chuck Peterson, it’s the 230 Jones Street Band, with Charlie McCarthy, saxophone & flute Glen Deardorff, guitar Al Obidinski, bass Tony Johnson, drums. Four old pros, and long-time friends, swingin’. $20 cash cover charge; proof of vaccination and masks required. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Audience capacity is 20. 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!

Walker Brents III considers Jeffers, casting a cold eye upon our wicked world from the craggy house he built in Carmel in the years following the first World War. Poet of the world’s edge. Candle bearer amidst elemental wave-roar. A mind holding its own, a prophetic eye of focused sight. A thinker whose thoughts give us moments of perception containing both desolation and splendor. A writer of great lines of austere simplicity. A resourceful sorcerer. A skillful seeker whose artistic quest challenges oblivion as it fits together stony syllables into utterances that defy time. A way to see how poetry can be an understanding of what life is, amidst the corruptions of human folly. A watcher on the far shore, whose vision has no beginning and no end. Catch Walker’s talk at 7:30pm Thursday, February 24th on our YouTube channel or our Facebook page

It was an extraordinary night of beautiful, intriguing night of music Saturday night at Bird & Beckett. Dahveed Behroozi, piano Shay Salhov, saxophone Jason Lewis, drums Dahveed Behroozi, Shay Salhov and Jason Lewis, with the late bassist John Shifflett, began in 2014 the development of a remarkable jazz quartet focused on original compositions and steeped in improvisation, drawing on classical and world music elements. Tonight, the trio soldiers on! $20 cash cover charge; proof of vaccination and masks required. Show at 7:30; doors at 7:20. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Audience capacity is 20. Find the Bird & Beckett live streams on our YouTube channel or Facebook page, and donate if you possibly can to support the musicians, the music and the venue! Donations to our general fund at this link

David Boyce, saxophones Scott Foster, guitar Charles Thomas, bass Cairo McCockran, drums Electronorhythmoharmonic music of the spheres. Live in the shop, $20 cash cover, proof of vax, masks. Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Catch it in the live stream on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel or Facebook page. Watching online? Donate per the information on the screen if you can. The stream is a crucial artist/audience lifeline in a tough time, and the support of the home viewing audience is also crucial to make it sustainable.

On February 14th, VirtualPoets! celebrates the work of Elana Dykewomon. Lesbian activist, writer, organizer Dykewomon has contributed significantly to the literary communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work will be read by Avotcja, Jewelle Gomez, Lourdes Figueroa, Norma Smith and our host Kim Shuck. The celebration will be followed by the usual open mic. The reading will begin, as always, at 7pm. Read more about our honoree here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elana_Dykewomon Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211

Up on holiday from his Central California Coast hacienda, guitarslinger Bruce Forman, creator of the cowbop genre and late of the Jazz at Pearl’s house band back in its 1980s heyday — when Vince Lateano anchored the scene from his drumkit — rides into town for a trio date with Vince on drums and Al Obidinski on bass. Can’t fail to please! Better call for a reservation! 415-586-3733. Bring a $20 to help us pay the band!  Read up on Bruce here! Viewable live on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel or Facebook page. If you’re watching it online, please donate per the information on the screen to help us pay the muscians and to support the music & venue! Video here.

Maurice Tani has been called a “cartographer of the human heart” (Scott Bloom, in The Bay Twang). Henry Salvia is all heart, with a winsome view of romance and a facility on keyboard that’s made him the cornerstone of countless bands traveling the backroads of country & R&B music. As Maurice’s record company, Little Village Foundation, says “Known for his wry/rye-to-romantic songwriting, agile guitar style and expressive singing, Tani’s particular flavor of Americana is a broad spectrum tincture of influences to cure what ails you. While rooted (at times distantly) in country music, his writing is centered on an urban-western perspective. Short musical narratives of life on the left coast. A sort of cinema for the blind.” Love is blind. Maurice and Henry are beautiful. $15 cover charge at the door, plus proof of vaccination (against the virus, if not against heartbreak) and a mask to hide your secret sorrow…