Lorca Hart, drums Brian Ho, organ Lyle Link, saxophone Lorca Hart leads a trio through two sets of live streamed jazz. Lorca grew up in a musical household in Taos, New Mexico, and now inhabits his own musical household here in the Bay Area, with percussionist Amy Molinelli and their young son. Lorca studied at CalArts in L.A. in the early 1990s with Albert “Tootie” Heath, Joe La Barbera, Charlie Haden and Wadada Leo Smith. He went on to work professionally with Bobby Hutcherson, Stanley Jordan, Ralph Moore, Carmen Lundy, Freddie Hubbard, Calvin Keys, Craig Handy, Kyle Eastwood, Herman Riley, Azar Lawrence, Red Holloway, Plas Johnson, John Heard, Danny Grissett, Justo Almario, Bennie Maupin, Phil Ranelin, Dave Pike, Don Menza, Hugh Masekela, Anton Schwartz, the Clayton Brothers, Anthony Wilson, Julian Lage and many others. View our live streams on our YouTube channel and our Facebook page. No audiences in the…

A fine quartet, once again, assembled by drummer Tony Johnson, well nigh a legend on the local scene! Each of these players has been well respected on the national and international scene for decades; each brings a raft of experience to the bandstand. Bob Kenmotsu, sax Keith Saunders, piano John Wiitala, bass Tony Johnson, drums   View our live streams on our YouTube channel and our Facebook page. No audiences in the shop just yet. $20 suggested donation or pay what your economics allow at this link We pay a “guaranteed fair wage” of $150 per musician to each musician performing in our Friday and Saturday evening live streams and you are the first one we look to in order to get that money together, so please do what you can! We are extremely grateful as well to the many individuals in the community who donate to our nonprofit Bird…

Bird & Beckett is presenting an occasional sequence of Sunday morning streamed conversations from the bookshop stage on topics of interest to the neighborhood and the city. You can find them on our YouTube channel and our Facebook page. Can’t tune in at the appointed time? They’ll stay up in the same places for viewing at your convenience. CCSF is facing cuts of more than 50%, with classes and programs in the balance and hundreds of faculty jobs at stake. These unprecedented cuts will be devastating to the city’s students and economy and undermine City College of San Francisco’s essential mission: to provide an accessible and quality education to all San Franciscans, especially those most at risk. Mary Bravewoman, CCSF math professor and AFT 2121 Vice President, and English department faculty member Tehmina Khan, AFT 2121 Executive Board Representative-at-Large and Grievance Team Member, will detail the impact expected if the…

John Calloway trio with guest vocalist Angie Doctor will be performing songs with themes for the season of Spring and with that, the slow but sure opening up of music and arts venues in the city! John Calloway, flute & percussion Murray Low, piano Saul Sierra, bass Angie Doctor, vocal live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. No audiences in the shop just yet. $20 suggested donation $2 to $200 sliding scale. No kidding! High or low, pay what your economics allow at this link. John Calloway is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger who has over 40 years of experience as a professional musician. He has performed with renowned jazz artists Israel Cachao Lopez, Max Roach, and Omar Sosa. In the San Francisco Bay Area, John has built a solid foundation as a as a performer and arranger, leading his own ensembles and projects as well as collaborations with John Santos,…

Scott’s quartet tonight plays original arrangements, many of which they recorded and were starting to play at Haight Street’s famed Club Deluxe just before the pandemic came down.  They’re looking forward to revisiting the material and making it fresh. ________________ Omar Aran drums and arranger Ben Stolorow piano Matt Montgomery bass Scott Foster, guitar ________________ live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. No audiences in the shop just yet. $20 suggested donation / pay what your economics allow at this link.

San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita Kim Shuck continues to host the twice-monthly Bird & Beckett poetry series on Zoom, with the assistance of Brett Benson. The readings now take place on the second and fourth Monday of each month. At 7pm. Bring your work! Tonight, the featured readers are Dan Brady and E. K. Keith, two long-time poetry reading organizers — a theme that will continue for this reading and the next one on April 26th. Dan runs the series at Sacred Grounds coffee house — as far as we know, the oldest poetry open mic in the City! E. K. organizes Poems Under the Dome — an annual event that takes place at City Hall — among numerous other poetry events and series. Join the Zoom reading to hear their poetry, then stay for the open mic and read your own. Email [email protected] to receive an invitation to the…

Eric Shifrin, piano & vocals Joe Kyle, Jr., bass Randy Lee Odell, drums Get in with the In Crowd. Bring your wallet! live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. No audiences in the shop just yet. $20 suggested donation / pay what your economics allow at this link. From Jelly Roll to Gene Autrey, you’re in for two eclectic sets of jazz chestnuts, country crooning & a few of your more eccentric novelty numbers. Eric Shifrin has been enhancing the convivial atmosphere of San Francisco’s bars, lounges and swank clubs for decades. So have his sidemen on this date! So get down to Bird & Beckett on Saturday night (via YouTube or Facebook) and enjoy what he can do in a little trio of like-minded professionals. Don’t forget that wallet! Paypal, Venmo, the Cash app. They all serve the purpose. You can also drop cash or a check by the store,…

Smith Dobson V, vibraphone Jeffrey Burr, guitar Eric Markowitz, bass Tony Johnson, drums Two sets of jazz standards and originals, live streamed on YouTube and Facebook. No audiences in the shop just yet. $20 suggested donation / pay what your economics allow at this link. Steeped in music at a young age — the son of a renowned jazz pianist and one of our favorite jazz vocalists — Smith is a multi-instrumentalist. His talents on vibes, sax and drums have been developed to a high degree over many years. A couple of years ago, he added the stand-up bass; and during the covidian era, he’s been working on the guitar. It’s not that he has a mania for playing them all at once, though. Tonight, he’ll have three of the Bay Area’s top jazz talents covering the guitar, bass and drums. It’s just that his creative hunger is not something…

The reigning tenor player of our place and time, Noel Jewkes has been respected and adulated for his lovely work on the horn for decades. He knows his way around any number of other instruments as well, and pens instantly classic tunes with alacrity. He was just a kid out in Utah when he started playing the resorts with his family’s band… then he came out to psychedelicize in jazz with the hippie rock crowd; the only male member of the Ace of Cups, among other pursuits. For decades since, he’s been known as Dr. Legato for his beautiful work on the tenor sax. Now, he can be considered an elder statesman of the art. This evening, Noel brings a reliable cohort of masterful players — Grant Levin, piano; Chris Amberger, bass; and Mark Lee, drums (pictured at left with the great tenor player Howard Wiley). We could sing each…

Simon Rowe – organ Dave McNab – guitar Brian Kendrick – drums Simon Rowe’s organ trio can be heard outdoors every other Saturday afternoon from 1-3pm on Wilder Street, just up the block from Canyon Market. They hold forth from a patio just above street level, with the music wafting right down to Diamond Street. Real live musicians playing within earshot of the strolling audience, imagine! This Saturday, after a couple of hours filling street with jazz, they’ll hang in the neighborhood ’til the evening — when they’ll present two sets of high caliber, B3-driven jazz from the Bird & Beckett stage, live streamed to the world. Live on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. $20 suggested donation / pay what your economics allow at this link. Absolutely no one turned away for lack of funds! Strapped or flush, we all need this music. Send your contribution by PayPal to [email protected], by Venmo…

It’s with a heavy heart that we note the loss of our good friend Dean Reilly two weeks ago. This one is for him. Tony Johnson and Glen Deardorff bring Charlie McCarthy and Al Obidinski to the bandstand to pay homage. Dean was something of a legendary figure in San Francisco jazz history, though one of the most unassuming jazz legends you could imagine. From his youth in Puyallup, Washington, where hearing Jimmy Blanton playing with Duke Ellington’s band gave him the epiphany that made him a bassist, he became a key figure in the San Francisco scene of the 1950s, associated with such venues as the Blackhawk and the hungry i, playing with Vince Guaraldi, Eddie Duran and countless other San Francisco jazz greats not to mention a raft of internationally famed stars from Stan Getz and Anita O’Day to Earl Hines to Thelonious Monk. He was playing as…

  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…