Thursday evening, writer, literary spelunker, promoter of avant garde excellence Alan Kaufman presents his new novel, The Berlin Woman. Friday after work, Mission Hot Club (bassist Bing Nathan and a squad of gypsy jazzers plus vocal trio, The Muted Jewel Tones) celebrate as the holiday season rockets on Saturday night, Rhodessa Jones & Idris Ackamoor take it to the heights and then Idris’s band, The Pyramids, seals the deal Sunday late afternoon, Devine’s Jug Band reaches for the sublime Detail in the posts that follow soon, but you can trust that it’s all far too good to be imagined! So don’t rely on your imagination… get down to the shop! You need the respite from the hurly burly, and, frankly, you need the fun and joy of it!

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Pete Devine, jug, washboard, kazoo, drums Meredith Axelrod, guitar and vocals Morgan Cochneuer, mandolin, banjo-mando, fiddle Devine’s Jug Band is a San Francisco ensemble wise to the ways of the weird old South. Devine’s Jug Band IS “America’s most authentic sounding jug band”…say’s legendary radio personality Mal Sharpe, formally of KCSM Radio. Playing jug band blues, hokum, and old-style string band music – Devine’s Jug band consists of Meredith Axelrod on guitar & vocals, Morgan Cochneuer on Mandolin, Banjo-mando & fiddle, and Pete Devine blowing that old whisky porcelain jug for the bass – as well as percussion and vocals! This is a rare show for the jug band – so please don’t miss this very special event!

The folks who pour their hearts, souls, art and toil into producing a literary journal out of City College of San Francisco twice each year, with fall and spring issues, invite you to listen to some of the work and party with them. It’s certainly a fundraiser, so if you can spare twenty or two hundred, then cut it loose and plump up their skinny budget! If it doesn’t hurt you much or at all, then why not? It’ll certainly help them, and we need their creativity, their positivity, their activism and their soulfulness. CCSF is one of the world’s great institutions, cultivating the minds and talents of San Francisco natives and transplants alike for many decades. Their teaching staff is extraordinary. And the students who flow through, all ages, all races, all genders, all neurologies, all ilks, are a gift to the world. Prop ’em up and show ’em…

Lena is a married, chronically unfaithful, and devoted only to gratifying her ambitions and hard-driving libido. Nathan is a footloose womanizing American author, unable to produce the big novel for which he’s been contracted. Their affair becomes a high-stakes reckless game of jealousy, rivalling ambitions, gender conflict, political combat and artistic outrage. But beneath it all, dark secrets haunt their pasts, while overshadowing their love is a world in which Anti-Semitism is burgeoning, The Holocaust is denied or forgotten and a new kind of totalitarianism threatens to sweep Lena, Nathan, and all of humanity, to the very brink of annihilation. Alan Kaufman, the Bronx-born son of a French-Jewish Holocaust survivor is a writer, memoirist and poet. He is the author of the memoirs Jew Boy and Drunken Angel, and the novel Matches; and the editor of several anthologies, including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The Outlaw Bible of American Literature…

Le jazz hotshots meet sweet & sassy harmonizers and they’ve all got rhythm! Mission  Hot Club Hélène Bahu, violin Sasha Yakubovich, clarinet Scott Feichter, guitar Roberto Aguilar, guitar Robert Kennedy, accordion Bing Nathan, bass The Muted Jewel Tones Rose Koron Raena Frohlich Cassandra Lindop   $20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated https://www.facebook.com/missionhotclub/ https://www.facebook.com/themutedjeweltones/

$20 cover charge; sliding scale available The Jazz Philanthropists Union, with support from the Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund, presents two phenomenal artists, long associated as Cultural Odyssey and equally acclaimed individually for their work. PERFORMANCE MUSIC: “WELL, SHUT MY MOUTH WIDE OPEN!” & DIRECT FROM EUROPE!!!! IDRIS ACKAMOOR AND THE PYRAMIDS “Well, Shut My Mouth Wide Open!” is a performance that explores the medium of non-verbal communication exploring the experimental genre of physical theatre, gesture, sign language and experimental movement and vocal techniques. https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/11/19/activist-performer-rhodessa-jones/ Music City Sessions: Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids perform “Virgin” live from Studio 18! The Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund’s subsidy of this date allows us to pay a “fair wage” of $150 per musician today, one third more than our regular guarantee on a Saturday night! The Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund is a project of Jazz in the Neighborhood, established with the aim of raising gigging…

Avotcja & Tony are joined by percussionists Louie Romero, Carlos Caro and Vince de Jesus for tonight’s reading! Avotcja is a profound force on the Bay Area cultural scene — a volcanic poet fluidly fusing English and Spanish in her fiery work; a writer of stories in many genres; an insightful essayist of great clarity; a formidable bandleader, interweaving her words and percussion with the expressive talents of the cavalcade of soulful world musicians that revolve though her band Modúpue; a long-time dj on both KPOO and KPFA, week after week spinning amazing tracks from legendary and emerging artists coming from countless musical traditions; the host and organizer of a long running and crucial poetry series; a fierce advocate for the people, for the mom and pop stores, and for the children. With Modúpue, Avotcja has played Bird & Beckett the first Sunday afternoon of each year (mark your calendar…

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated no funds? all the better! come for the show! Karina Denike, vocals Tom Griesser, saxophone Michael McIntosh, piano Vic Wong, guitar Joe Kyle, Jr., bass The Cottontails have romped through vintage classics of the jazz age, swing era hits and 50s R&B without a care at jazz clubs, dance halls, cabarets and art events, at venues including SF City Hall, California Academy of Sciences, Bimbo’s 365 Club, Palace of Fine Arts, Amoeba Records, SF Legion of Honor, Yoshi’s SF/Oakland, San Francisco Maritime Museum, Cell Space, Great American Music Hall, and in clubs, concert series and jazz festivals in Northern California, New York City, Tokyo, England, and Germany, and they’re at the Club Deluxe every 3rd Friday. And here they are, this Sunday afternoon playing for you at Bird & Beckett! You couldn’t want a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon to wrap up the…

The first of November saw the premiere of a six-episode, German-made series for television entitled “You Are the Wave,” rooted in a week-long 1967 Palo Alto high school classroom experiment.  In that experiment, students and their teacher (Mr. Jones) gave up their freedom for the prospect of being superior to their neighbors. An attempt to learn how fascism can emerge and take hold, the impact of this exercise escaped the classroom and swept through the school with astonishing rapidity. An unwanted war, racism, and cultural change — it’s a cautionary story relevant today. As within a single week the Third Wave movement he had posited grew outside his class and began to number in the hundreds, Jones saw that the experiment had actually spiraled out of control. At week’s end, he summoned the students in a rally where he indicated he would tell them that the classroom project was part…

A celebration and reading: Haight Ashbury Literary Journal Vol. 35, Number 1. The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal started in 1979.  The founders’ idea was that there were talented writers in the Haight, which was starting to revive after the mid-seventies downturn. The editors put ads in literary directories, and started to get submissions from the rest of the city, other states, and even countries. 40 years later, another issue hits the streets! Readers will include Kim Shuck, K.R. Morrison, Melen Lunn, William Taylor Jr., Will Walker, Karen Melander-Magoon, Amy Smith, Dan Richman, Raina Hunter, James McColley Eilers, Peggy Schimmelman, Alice Rogoff, Cesar Love, Maya Khosla, Brian K. Turner. Free. Donations to the HALJ appreciated.    

We open at 11 a.m. Sunday, and in no time we’re off and running with events. At noon, contributors to the Haight Ashbury Literary Review celebrate the new issue of that august rag; then, at 2:00pm, renowned local educator/writer/storyteller Ron Jones, who seems the most unassuming soul you could imagine, comes in surfing the tsunami of attention being generated by the German-made tv series “We are the Wave.” Ron created a high school experiment in fascism that roiled the waters of placid Palo Alto in 1967 and that’s never lost its impact or relevance. Once you’ve shed your wet suit, you could do worse than cut loose with our favorite little jump band, the mighty Cottontails, 4:30-6:30pm! A post-Thanksgiving tradition at Bird & Beckett… oh, and Jerry Ferraz will squeeze in an hour of his flamenco-tinged guitar and and timeless song before the noontime poets take off. 6:30-7 is just…

The Jazz Philanthropists Union presents… New Squatoolas take you on a joyous romp in a New Orleans mode, playing the music of NOLA jazz, funk and soul pioneers – The Meters, Smokey Johnson, Fats Domino, The Nevilles, The Wild Tchoupitoulas, ‘Fess – as well as original compositions invoking the style and vibe of those and other greats of that bayou metropolis. Jim Peterson saxophones Scott Foster guitar Joe Kyle bass Larry Vann drums $20 cover charge; sliding scale available      

Kevin Stewart, piano Chris Amberger, bass Roberto Quintana, congas Myron Cohen, drumset Myron Cohen is an irrepressibly joyous drummer, a champion of the culture, a patron of the arts, and he’s in fabulous company tonight! doors at 8:30; music at 9 – two sets $20 cover charge; sliding scale available    

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Howard Wiley, sax Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Mark Lee, drums No words can convey the pleasures you’re in for at Bird & Beckett with this quartet! Happy Thanksgiving!

$20-25 suggested donation (just $5 per musician!). Any amount appreciated. Patrick Wolff  & Chris Byars, saxophones Jeffrey Burr-guitar Michael Zisman-bass Austin Harris-drums Chris Byars is a mainstay of the NYC bebop scene, a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader who helped put the Smalls jazz club on the map. He has 15 albums out under his name, many of them on the legendary Steeplechase label. He recently appeared with the WDR Big Band in Köln, Germany as a guest soloist and arranger in tribute concerts to Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. In addition to the usual haunts, Chris has performed as a cultural ambassador for US Embassies in 46 countries. For this special show, he teams up with fellow saxophonist Patrick Wolff and some of SF’s swinging-est to present a mix of bebop classics and his own hip, harmonically rich compositions. Follow the two links below for audio from KCSM programs about…