We’re pleased to enter our sixth year of Saturday night “jazz club” programming with a quartet led by the masterful saxophonist and composer James Mahone, with Grant Levin on piano; Giulio Xavier Cetto on bass and Malachi Whitson on drums. James Mahone has performed throughout the U.S., Japan and Europe over 30 years. In early 90s, he was the composer for popular jazz band, Black Note. Mahone has performed alongside Wynton Marsalis, Eric Reed, Billy Higgins, Gil-Scott Heron, El De Barge, Josh Redman, and Roy Hargrove, Reggie Workman, Billy Harper, Arnie Lawrence, and R&B band The Chesterfields. $20 cover charge; sliding scale available. This date is presented with support from the Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund, a project of Jazz in the Neighborhood.  The GFWF subsidy of 40% of the guarantee allows for a $150 per musician guarantee tonight, 50% higher than Bird & Beckett’s normal scale on Saturday nights. We…

Soulful, righteous and joyous, no one mobilizes such amazing musicians as Avotcja! Their devotion to her and her music and poetry speaks volumes. Avotcja, poetry and small multi-percussion Francis Wong, saxophone & flute Sandi Poindexter, violin Jon Jang, piano Sascha Jacobsen, bass Raul Ramirez, percussion Come out for one of the peak experiences you’ll have in America this July! And help us celebrate Avotcja’s 78th year on the planet! $20 suggested donation; sliding scale available.  

David Holper is a performing poet and Professor of English at College of the Redwoods in Eureka, California. He recently published his second book of poems, The Bridge, with (Sequoia Song Publishing). Many of the poems in that collection have already been published, and a number of have won prizes. Times Standard article, April 5, 2019 Jennifer Elise Foerster is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and received her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship (2017), a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship (2014), and was a Robert Frost Fellow in Poetry at Breadloaf (2017) and a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford (2008-2010). She has also received fellowships to attend Soul Mountain Retreat, Caldera Arts, the Naropa Summer Writing Program, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Hermitage Artist Retreat.…

The Seducers have had a monthly gig at Bird & Beckett for three years, playing classic, outlaw and honky tonk songs by the likes of Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Bobby Bare, plus originals and a few from left field. Look for the Seducers every second Sunday in San Francisco’s premier little bookshop/listening room. Bring a beer if that’s your inclination, but for one outing a month you’ll get a nice break from the barroom clatter that can sometimes obscure the beauty of these fabulous bits of American genius. You won’t regret it for a minute. BYOB and kick back. It all makes for a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening before returning to the working grind. Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals Kenny Owen, drums $10-20 suggested donation. $5 for students/musicians/fixed income.

Drummer Jon Frank leads a quartet with Noah Frank, trumpet; Grant Levin, piano; Charles Thomas; bass.

Avant pastoralism in a chamber music mode Sheldon Brown (clarinet and bass clarinet) Joseph Noble (flute, alto flute, bass flute) Amber Lamprecht (oboe and English horn) www.echosbones.bandcamp.com.

The Jazz Philanthropists Union presents… the 5th Anniversary of jazz club!   Join us to celebrate five years of Saturday night jazz, when lights are low! Pianist Grant Levin has been on the date since the beginning, building an avid following and bringing to the stage some of the Bay Area’s most amazing musicians. Tonight, veteran saxophonist Noel Jewkes, and journeyman saxophonist Dave Ellis share the front line. And you won’t find a better rhythm section for the occasion than Grant, Greg and Genius. Grant Levin, piano Noel Jewkes, saxophone Dave Ellis, saxophone Greg D’Augelli, bass Genius Wesley, drums $25 cover charge tonight! BYOB. The food on the break is on us!

Noah Frank, trumpet Eli Maliwan, tenor sax Kai Lyons, guitar Curtis Aikens, bass Genius Wesley, drums With a sound and approach flexibly fitted to the space and the time, Sueños fuses hip-hop & R&B rhythms, blending modal with gospel harmonies, flowing with bebop-tinged horns over the top of a tight rhythm section that knows no boundaries. Original music and tunes by Roy Hargrove, Christian Scott, Kanye West, and J Dilla, alongside classic jazz standards, ballads and burners. Sueños has performed at the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival in SF and the PDX Jazz Festival in Portland, as well as at secret shows curated by SOFAR Sounds SF, SOFAR Sounds Portland, and SOFAR Sounds New York. $20 suggested donation; any amount, five to fifty, is very much appreciated and makes presenting music out here possible.

The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project in association with Jazz in the Neighborhood presents: Ray Skjelbred, piano Clint Baker, trumpet Riley Baker, drums A sublime stroll through the history of early jazz and the stride era.   Many have had good things to say about Ray: He plays so good it scares me. – Jess Stacy Tremendous ability and imagination – Turk Murphy Ray’s playing is the ultimate illustration of jazz as the “sound of surprise.’” – Hal Smith No money can pay your true value – Barbara Dane What an honor, Ray! I listen to this cd (Pass the Jug) so often and it gets better each time. How could it go wrong with the genius of Ray Skjelbred.- Ida Melrose, daughter of “Kansas City” Frank Melrose …the nearest to Art Hodes I’ve ever heard. – John G. Featherstone (Storyville Magazine) In Ray Skjelbred we have another two-handed pianist…

Right around the Fourth of July each year, we’re pleased to present the Buena Vista Jazz Band — a seven-piece trad jazz aggregation featuring the amazing vocalist Darlene Langston, with Noel Weidkamp, trumpet; John Hunt, trombone & vocals; Don Neely, clarinet & vocals; Si Perkoff, piano; Al Obidinski, bass; and Bill Belasco, drums  Apocryphally, Louis Armstrong always claimed July 4th as his birthday and that’s good enough reason for us to celebrate the New Orleans roots of jazz and its diaspora through Chicago, New York and other far flung outposts. The Buena Vista Jazz Band, based on the configuration of Eddie Condon’s hot jazz ensembles that lit up New York in the 40s and 50s, is always up to the task! $20 suggested donation – more if you can manage it for this seven-piece band! But pay only what makes you comfortable. BYOB!

  Editor Shizue Siegel presents a reading by Dee Allen, James Cagney, Francée Covington David Erdreich and Richard Sanderell, Norma Smith, Lyzette Wanzer, Avotcja  — all contributors to the just-published anthology Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area (Pease Press, 2019) — 300 pages of poetry, prose and art from 100 writers and artists of color and white allies celebrating the rich variety that truly makes America great. Civil liberties matter—to everyone, not just those who are targeted now. Those who keep silent may be next. People of color are 60% of Bay Area population, yet we remain under represented and underpublished. In polarized times, democracy cannot be taken for granted. We need to reach within ourselves and reach out to others, moving forward together to create the society we want to see. Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist, and community activist…

  Jack Riordan, guitar Matt Montgomery, bass Hamir Atwal, drums Two extraordinary sets of live jazz in store for you tonight! $20 cover charge; sliding scale available where needed.  

Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Mark Lee, drums Pepe Jacobo, congas Exquisite jazz in San Francisco’s best listening room, bar none! With books and great acoustics. BYOB. $20 suggested donation, but any amount is welcome. You won’t find a better small combo live jazz experience than this! Grant Levin is an extraordinary pianist, and his colleagues are every bit his equal. Bassist Chris Amberger was present and contributing at a high level to the birth of free jazz in Oakland in the late 1960s, toured with Art Blakey and is one of the key veteran bassists in the Bay Area. Mark Lee started working straight out of high school six days a week with legendary saxophonist Jules Broussard, and still gigs six days a week all over the Bay Area. Pepe Jacobo plays traps and percussion with the best of them, teaching and gigging constantly. The four have worked…

The return of the mighty David Murray and the miraculous Kahil El’Zabar. People get ready! We are pleased and honored to present a return engagement by one of the towering jazz figures of our time, saxophonist David Murray, playing in a duo format with his esteemed colleague of three decades, the Chicago-based percussionist Kahil El’Zabar. Messrs. Murray and El’Zabar last performed as a duo at Bird & Beckett in April of 2017. Doors at 7:30pm; Showtime 8:00pm. Two 50-minute sets ending at 10pm. On the day of the show, at 7pm, we will sell 10 seats at $30 each plus 15 standing room tickets at $25 each. Cash only, please. (24 tix were sold in advance on June 1.) Capacity is 49 (35 seated). BYOB. Call 415-586-3733 for information. No advance reservations will be taken. Thanks for your consideration! A founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, David Murray is…

Sharman Duran, compositions, vocals, piano Todd Dickow, reeds Alex Baum, bass Bob Blankenship, drums Introducing her cd: “Questioning Reality” On her latest CD, vocalist/ pianist/ songwriter Sharman Duran addresses the adventure and angst that characterize life in the 21st Century, whether it’s celebrating the boon that social media has been to the lives of lonely people everywhere, or the inconvenience of having an attack drone mistakenly sent to your address, or how much fun a resourceful human race is going to have coping with the devastation that they caused through global warming. Often the message, like the music, is complex, poignant, nuanced. Born and raised in San Francisco by jazz musicians guitarist Eddie Duran and vocalist/pianist Arlene Hart Duran, Sharman spent her formative years in a milieu of  the Bay Area’s finest musicians, as well as visual and literary artists.   Her house was always full of the sounds of such…