Neeli Cherkovski will hang out on the bookshop’s stage to chat with you one-on-one, at a polite social distance, fully masked, for five minutes or so at a time, about his re-released Bukowski bio, his book of conversations with the legendary poet & drummer Clark Coolidge and his own latest poetry collection, Hang on to the Yangtze River (Lithic Press, 2020). Neeli is an internationally respected poet, author of more that twenty books, who has traveled widely, having given readings in Mexico, Italy and a number of other countries. Translations of several of his books have been brought out by presses in several countries.  His papers are at The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.  He is now completing a new edition of his essential collection of “memoir-esque” essays on twelve key poets, Whitman’s Wild Children.  He has a thousand stories from a storied life in poetry. Third Mind Books of Ann Arbor,…

The Eli Maliwan Trio consists of Eli on Tenor Saxophone, Curtis Aikens on Upright Bass, and Kai Lyons on Electric Guitar. These three musicians and friends have played together in various projects and in different combinations over the years and their deep musical communication has developed into a unique and personal sound. The trio will be performing jazz standards. Kai Lyons has played with Big Chief Donald Harrison, drummer Mike Clark from Herbie Hancock Headhunters, organist Will Blades, and pianist Larry vuckovich. Studied jazz with Mulgrew Miller, Harold Mabern, Vincent Herring, Rich Perry, and Gene Bertoncini at William Paterson University outside of New York City. He frequently travels to Cuba, New Orleans, New York City, and Brazil, and has studied music in Ghana Africa Bassist and Composer Curtis Aikens is a versatile musician who has worked in a variety of settings including theater pits, orchestras, folk, rock and hip hop…

  Hop on our live stream to funky soulville Todd Swenson leads the band Marc Levine on bass Larry Vann on drums   suggested cover charge — $20 sliding scale — $2 to $200 Support live music & the musicians who play it!  Use the links below: Take in the show on YouTube  or  Facebook Pay your cover charge / make your donation Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter Bird & Beckett pays a guaranteed fair wage of $150 per musician and supplements it as your donations allow. That will take some heavy lifting on your part, but heavy makes you happy. That said, if you’re struggling in these tough times, we want you to keep your wallet in your pocket. The show is on us & your friends in the cyberstream!  

All day long Monday, in eleven 30-minute sets, professional Bay Area jazz musicians take the bookshop stage in duos, trios and quartets!  All live streamed to you via YouTube & Facebook. Scroll down for the schedule! The show will be at its best when you have a large screen and nice speakers in play, but if you’re out hiking or picnicking in the parks, catch it on your phone! Celebrate Labor Day and honor the musicians that make jazz their job! The Independent Musician’s Alliance is guaranteeing each individual musician $50 per set for their work, and we hope you’ll stake us to that with your donations via PayPal (https://www.tinyurl.donate-b-and-b) or using the Venmo app on your smartphone (sending to @birdandbeckett). It’s just a small payday in a time when unemployment is rampant and gigs are scarce. But it’s potentially larger depending on your ability to be generous in these…

Bassist Charles Thomas plays jazz, soul, funk, reggae, classical — anything you could want. All of it with consummate skill, exuberance and expressive beauty.  At Bird & Beckett, Charles plays jazz. He’s been heard from our stage countless times, most often in the company of drummers Mark Lee and the late Jimmy Ryan and pianist Grant Levin.  Tonight, for our live stream on YouTube and facebook, he leads a solid trio featuring pianist Greg Jacobs and drummer Mark Lee, reprising a trio we heard here back in 2017. Guaranteed to please.   suggested cover charge — $20 sliding scale — $2 to $200 Support live music & the musicians who play it!  Use the links below: Take in the show on YouTube  or  Facebook Pay your cover charge / make your donation Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter Bird & Beckett pays a guaranteed fair wage of…

Darren Johnston  / Adam Shulman / Lorca Hart         trumpet / piano / drums   Jazz in San Francisco Live streamed from Bird & Beckett Thursday, September 3rd – 7:30 pm suggested cover charge — $20 sliding scale — $2 to $200 Support live music & the musicians who play it!  Use the links below: Take in the show on YouTube  or  Facebook Pay your cover charge / make your donation Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter Bird & Beckett pays a guaranteed fair wage of $150 per musician and supplements it as your donations allow.   * * * * * * * *   Musicians you’ve heard at Bird & Beckett, and many, many musicians you’ve never heard here, are busking in the parks, on the Embarcadero and in countless other public spaces to share their music with each other and with…

  Scott R. Looney, piano André Custodio, drums explore the boundaries of jazz in duo interplay, drawing inspiration from bop and avant traditions.  Use the links below to view & listen, and to help us pay the musicians. Take in the show on YouTube or Facebook Pay your “cover charge” – i.e., donate! $1-$200 sliding scale $10-20 suggested               Scott R. Looney studied composition and improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick and Frederic Rzewski, obtaining his MFA in Composition from California Institute of the Arts. He’s forged a signature style using the inside and outside of the piano, plucking strings, using metal implements and other quick preparations, in combination with playing the piano in conventional ways. Scott has recorded and/or performed with a growing list of world class improvisers: Wolfgang Fuchs, Jon Raskin (of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet), Henry Kaiser, Gianni Gebbia, Gino…

Songwriter Maurice Tani with his duo partner, the American bassist Mike Anderson, return to the Bird & Beckett stage for a program of his classic songs and some new ones. Maurice has been called a “cartographer of the human heart” (Scott Bloom, in The Bay Twang), and we think that sums it up pretty well. His record company, Little Village Foundation, spells it out: “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.” Our live streams are now accessed on both YouTube and Facebook. Suggested cover charge: $20 / sliding scale – $2 to $200 Support live music &…

Walker Brents continues his exploration of the work of the great French-Algerian writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, author of novels including The Stranger, The Plague and The Fall, the short story volume Exile and the Kingdom and numerous plays, as well as key essay collections The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel and Algerian Chronicles. Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Suggested cover charge: $10 / sliding scale – $1 to $100 Use the links below: Take in Walker’s talk on YouTube or Facebook Pay your cover charge Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter

Scott Foster plays from the sheaf of compositions he’s been producing during this “special period.” This is a special opportunity to get inside the workings of his mind and the play of his creative impulses. Our live streams are now accessed on both YouTube and Facebook! Suggested cover charge: $20 / sliding scale – $2 to $200 Support live music & the musicians who play it! Bird & Beckett pays a guaranteed fair wage and supplements it as your donations allow. Use the links below: Take in the show on YouTube or Facebook Pay your cover charge / make your donation Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter

Nothing says something like this amalgam of charm! Say the Flying Salvias, themselves, “Being locked up since March has provided much time to ponder.  The Flying Salvias are therefore finally acknowledging that what was previously described as a “lack of focus” is actually two separate identities masquerading as The Flying Salvias.  So, along those lines, we will be presenting “The Return of K. N. Right” (Country) and “Pop Goes the Jazzle” (Not Country).What you will hear: A set focusing on K. N. Right material.  We’ll revisit a couple tunes from our original Kathy N. Right country CD from years ago, add in several new tunes, and remember our dear friend Kathi Kamen Goldmark by doing the song Kathleen wrote with her, “Older Than Him”  aka “The Slut Song.”Pop Goes the Jazzle starts off with “Henry’s Hideaway” which will set the tone and mood for the rest of the set; we’ve…

Wednesday, 8/19* at 7:30 [postponed to 8/26] Walker Brents III on Albert Camus (part II). Thursday, 8/20 at 7:30 The Flying Salvias – words fail us!  Friday, 8/21 at 7:30 Scott Foster plumbs the Covid file – solo guitar, new compositions. Our live streams are now accessed on both YouTube and Facebook! Use the links below: Take in the show on YouTube or Facebook Pay your cover charge Subscribe to our YouTube channel Subscribe to our newsletter As for Scott Foster’s show on Friday 8/21 at 7:30 Scott began composing a tune a day from the start of the lockdown in March, and so has a thick sheaf of material. Towards the late summer, he began laying down recordings of some of that material. We’re looking forward to seeing where he is in the process. He’s been a Bird & Beckett stalwart, in many ways the heart and soul of…

Due to difficulties with the live stream technology, this performance has been postponed. Watch for their return on a Friday in a month or so. Despite the postponement, Kasey & Eric played two bebop tunes with elan before we decided to pull the plug for the evening–so our 18-year streak of consecutive weekly jazz dates at Bird & Beckett continues uninterrupted! Kasey Knudsen and Eric Vogler have a long history of playing music together in various configurations. They have worked together frequently with the “Holly Martins” trio, along with vocalist Lorin Benedict. For this special Bird and Beckett livestream concert, they will bring you their favorite Holly Martins repertoire in duo format, along with a few choice standards, lots of rhythmic twists and turns, and a few free improvisations.   Listen here to a sample of their interplay on the tune SubconsciousLee: Suggested cover charge: $20 / sliding scale –…