Classics of literature are most fully lived in the consciousness of individual readers. Known or unknown, such works abide. One such case is The Gate of Horn, the debut work by Gertrude Rachel Levy, a University of London archeologist. Long out of print, it was sent forth in 1948 into the post-war world, galvanizing a receptive audience with her detailed interpretation of what she found studying the signs left by prehistoric cultures. A most primordial image of the human soul emerges. This book has, in its own quiet way, inspired poets ever since it first appeared. It gives us points of departure and return. We shall see what we find in its insights this time around!     ____________________________________________ You’ll find Walker’s talk streamed live on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. We’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that Walker must eat to keep that intellect ticking,…

Tammy Hall brings Gary Brown on bass and Deszon Claiborne for a classic piano trio date, covering material from the gospel tinged to the blues to pop and always landing in the sophisticated elegance of straight ahead jazz. Catch the trio’s 90-minute performance on our facebook page or youtube channel And do please help us pay the musicians with your donation via Paypal (to [email protected]), Venmo (@birdandbeckett) or the Cash app ($BirdBeckett). If those methods don’t do it for you, you can email us your pledge and drop by the shop with cash or a check. It’s a time of too few gigs and too little gig income, so your support is crucial and very much appreciated. $20 is nice, but pay what you can! No one is ever turned away for lack of funds. $2-20-200 sliding scale. Find your sweet spot! Come an hour early, at 6:30 — using either of the…

Danny Bittker, clarinets & steel drum Joyce McBride, piano Scott Foster, guitar Guitarist Scott Foster offers a wonderful array of ensembles at Bird & Beckett on the third Friday of each month, and he has another in store for us tonight. Tonight, Danny Bittker brings his clarinets and steel drums to the party. This will be a performance of both intimacy and celebration, with a broad musical palette inspired by music of many rich sources. Danny has spent his life studying and enjoying jazz music as well as various African traditions, classical music of India, calypso and soca from Trinidad, and more. Joyce McBride, on piano this evening, is the acclaimed director of the 30-women strong vocal ensemble, Conspiracy of Venus, which draws on her interest in the medieval troubadour tradition, early polyphony, Balinese gamelan, Middle Eastern rhythms, jazz, East Bay funk, new music, rock and punk. As for Scott,…

Occasional Sunday mornings at 10, we host an hour-long, live-streamed conversation between and among local writers, scholars, activists and others on topics of particular and timely interest to Bay Area residents. This morning, Kitty Costello, co-editor of a new anthology  of Muslim American writers’ essays, fiction and poetry on a variety of themes — identity, ancestry, immigration, home and more — has invited the poet Tehmina Khan to join her for discussion of some issues raised in the anthology. Khan, who teaches at City College of San Francisco, will also touch on that crucial institution’s role in our civic life, its value to the community and the challenges it faces. Muslim American Writers at Home: Stories, Essays and Poems of Identity, Diversity and Belonging, is newly published by Freedom Voices, which produces works that speak to or from communities on the margins. Founded in 1989 in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District…

Greg Jacobs was born in London and grew up in San Rafael, where he started playing classical piano as a child. At twelve, he was inspired by the music of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Claude Debussy and local pianist Zack Hornstein, who rehearsed with Greg’s brother, Josh, at their home, playing blues and Dylan covers. Greg studied classical and jazz piano with the brilliant Gini Wilson for about four years while he attended San Rafael High School, spending countless hours playing the standards and falling ever deeper in love with the music of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. He played in jazz combos, participated in classical recitals and competitions and attended jam sessions in San Francisco, while also playing organ, guitar, and keyboard with friends that liked to play reggae, ska, blues and other music. Greg attended Jazz Camp West twice, taking…

The Shack-Shaking Music of HowellDevine “There is no blues band performing today as different as HowellDevine—nor as delightful.” ~ Lee Hildebrand, Living Blues Magazine/SF Chronicle Triple threat talent, Joshua Howell (guitar, harmonica, vocals) and percussion savant, Pete Devine (drums, washboard), plus veteran upright bassist, Joe Kyle Jr. deftly mix Delta/Country Blues with wildly syncopated rhythms to create a rollicking present-day sound rooted in early blues. HowellDevine breaks from the norm, providing rich and complex textures integral to the music rather than simple backing for a soloist. The result is a sound which stands in stark contrast to the typical blues heard in bars these days and would more likely be shaking the floors of a Southern juke joint some 70 years ago. Joshua Howell (Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica) Within three years of starting harmonica at the age of 14, Joshua was sitting in with many of the San Francisco Bay Area’s blues bands. He quickly became the desired…

Jinx returns to Glen Park, hot on the heels of his trio date across the bay at Piedmont Piano, with Kenan O’Brien on bass and Ken Owen on drums. Sure, he’s a rockabilly star, but he’s also devoted to the pioneering work of Charlie Christian and the jazz guitar styles of Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell and other classic masters of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.  https://www.jinxjones.com/gallery “Jinx Jones can indeed dazzle. Jones comps while launching melodic lines in a repertoire consisting of standards by Montgomery, Kessel, Lionel Hampton, and Benny Goodman, with his original ‘Alise’ lending a Latin mood. Most impressive is Jones’ arrangement of Miles Davis’ ‘So What,’ mixing percussive rhythm, single-note passages, and octaves in the modal masterpiece.” Dan Forte, Vintage Guitar Magazine, 2018. Catch this show on our facebook page or youtube channel Help us pay the musicians with your donation via Paypal (to [email protected]), Venmo (@birdandbeckett) or…

After performing on trumpet and piano in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970’s and 80’s, notably with Mark Levine and Chuck Clark, Tom Reynolds earned a B.A. in Music from UCBerkeley in 1982 and kept at it; but in 1988 he veered off into tech. In 2014, he returned to the music, playing keyboards, performing, composing, arranging, recording, and transcribing jazz solos. Tom’s playing and writing are informed by both classical and jazz idioms, and his piano improvisation style is particularly influenced by classic mainstream post-bop horn players (Tom Harrell, Woody Shaw, Kenny Dorham, Joe Henderson). Until the pandemic derailed a lot of venues, he was fielding a quintet, the “Conspiracy,” in venues including Rigger’s Loft, The Back Room, Rendon Hall at CJC and others. This Friday he’ll strip the Tom Reynolds Conspiracy down to a trio, with bassist Cindy Browne Rosefield and drummer Jason Lewis joining him…

  A slight change in plans brings us balafon maestro Mohammed Kouyate in a duo set with his student, Dan, on balafon.  For the second set, a trio with Dan on vibes with drummer Michael Mitchell and bassist Tyler Harlow. Rebecca Holtz can’t join us tonight, but sends her love and best wishes. Tonight will mark the third and last concert of Dan’s residency at Bird and Beckett, before he leaves the bay to continue his recording projects in Cali, Colombia and beyond. Dan Neville is an award winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and jazz big band arranger. In 2017, he won 1st place in the 2017 Jazz Search West competition, and he’s been featured playing vibes on the Today Show. He has also spearheaded two successful crowdfunding campaigns: One in 2017 for the release of his debut album Tenerife featuring an all-star ensemble and all original compositions; and the second…

“It’s never over when one person remembers you.” Sunday morning, join us for an hour’s discussion of the book Death in the Tenderloin and the individual residents whose lives are commemorated in this volume. Geoff Link, editor, and writers Marjorie Beggs and Tom Carter explore the motivations behind and circumstances surrounding the publication of this collection of obituaries written by members of the San Francisco Study Center and first published in the Tenderloin neighborhood newspaper, the Central City Extra. In 2013, just as it was losing its offices on the edge of the Tenderloin at Market and Leavenworth Streets, the San Francisco Study Center published a collection of obituaries they had been writing and publishing in the Central City Extra, a newspaper for the City’s most diverse and troubled neighborhood. The obituaries, which were written in large part to counter the anonymity that most of the subjects inhabited, were drawn…

Adam Shulman, organ Jeffrey Burr, guitar Smith Dobson, drums Adam’s trio will draw from the Great American Songbook and the bebop canon. Catch this show on our facebook page or youtube channel Support the musicians your donation by Paypal (to [email protected]), Venmo (@birdandbeckett) or the Cash app ($BirdBeckett). $20 is nice, but pay what you can! $20-200 sliding scale

Smith Dobson V, saxophone Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Tony Johnson, drums Catch this show on our facebook page or youtube channel Support the musicians your donation by Paypal (to [email protected]), Venmo (@birdandbeckett) or the Cash app ($BirdBeckett). $20 is nice, but pay what you can! $20-200 sliding scale This outing of the 230 Jones Street Irregulars  is dedicated to the memory of Jerry Logas, who passed away a few short weeks ago. Jerry had a long and wonderful career in the music and was a frequent performer on the Bird & Beckett stage; for years he was a core member of the 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band, which held down the fourth Friday slot until early in 2020, but which is on hiatus while Covid rages. Drummer Tony Johnson keeps the flame burning meanwhile with the Irregulars. As for their colleagues in the long-running Jones…

Concerned about the fate of the sincere reader in the sincere reader’s rigorous solitude, Walker believes it might have to be Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy that will guide his thoughts this time out… a book with breadth to match its depth, not to mention its fourfold humorousness. A patchwork encyclopedia, an epic mosaic. Too grand to be pre or postmodern, it stands alone in timelessness. No matter your personal paranoia, there’s something for you here, along with more than a few good laughs. Walker talks monthly on the last Thursday of the month. Catch this one on our facebook page or youtube channel Show your appreciation for Walker’s work by sending your donation by Paypal (to [email protected]), Venmo (@birdandbeckett) or the Cash app ($BirdBeckett)  

Inaugurating a series of occasional Sunday morning chats, Valerie Luu was at Bird & Beckett on February 21st in conversation with Jeremy Dan Fish via live stream to talk about her book, with Andria Lo, Chinatown Pretty! You can play back the conversation that took place on facebook or youtube From our pre-event post:  They’ll talk about what Valerie and her colleague, the photographer Andria Lo, found when they dove into the most pleasurable pursuit of discovering the dimensions of the fascinating, beguiling and individualized fashion sense so evident in the Bay Area’s Chinese communities once you stop to look. Send your comments and questions in the chat, and we’ll relay them to Valerie. See you Sunday morning! If you can’t catch these Sunday morning chats in real time, you’ll find them on our YouTube channel and Facebook page after the fact, so no worries. But it’ll be a nice…

It’s been a year-plus since James and Grant made the scene at Bird & Beckett — two extraordinary musicians backed by two more extraordinary musicians. A date not to be missed! James Mahone, saxophone Grant Levin, piano Josh Thurston-Milgrom, bass Genius Wesley, drums