Noon to 9 Piano Marathon on Saturday
1/22/11- A Bird & Beckett Benefit!

photo by baytaper.com

Bring your checkbook!

This Saturday, a cavalcade of pianists will coax beautiful music from the Yamaha P22 studio upright piano that we’re raising the money to buy from Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company.

If 100 of you put up $25 apiece, the job will be done!
More’s the better!

No donation is too small,
too big or unappreciated!

Since its early years on Diamond Street, Bird & Beckett has kept a piano on the premises- some good, some not so good, but none as wonderful as the one we’ve borrowed at no cost from Piedmont Piano this past year. Now, they’d like us to buy the thing, and we’d love to do it! Betty Wong, who plays at 4 pm Saturday, just gave it a workout and told us it “plays like butter”- she urged us, “don’t let them sell you one like it; you want this one!”  But it won’t come cheap, so help us out! Write a check, and you can take the deduction on your 2011 taxes!

It all starts at noon with Si Perkoff, who learned the rudiments of his style from the legendary Hall Overton in the famed NYC jazz loft at 821 Sixth Av. in the ’50s. It continues with Don Alberts, a skilled composer, novelist, poet, jazz historian and, not incidentally, a mad bebop master.  Next up is Jon Jang, the sublimely talented composer who came to prominence 20 years ago with the Pan Asian Arkestra- just the beginning of a career of international scope.  After Jon, neighborhood pianists are invited to take a turn at the keyboard for the ensuing hour, so start practicing!  And then, its Randy Craig, jazz professor of the keys, with roots in the madcap musical crewe that was the Pickle Family Circus band…

Stephen Shapiro, a jazz cat through and through, director of the Community Music Center and the man responsible for convincing Piedmont Piano to loan us this wonderful instrument in the first place, will join Randy for a little four-handed pianistics before turning the keyboard over to Betty Wong at 4 pm. Betty, another renowned composer and performer,  leads the Phoenix Spring Ensemble, but here on Saturday, she’s all about tango- playing solo and in duo format with a flautist and then an accordionist…

Dorothy Lefkovits, known to Bird & Beckett regulars as a sublime vocalist, will play a tune at 5:00 that recalls the days when she made the stage at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre… Nora Maki, Japanese sprite & a monstrously swinging bopper follows… other special guests tba… then it’s Rebecca Whittington with some Satie and Bonnie Knight choosing Chopin, some more special guests, including Stephen Prutsman (a local fella who’s also artistic director of the Cartegena Int’l Fest. of Music) at 7, and the piece de resistance, some rockin’ New Orleans flavored pianistics by the hip and happenin’ Macy Blackman closing it out from 8 to 9.

Don’t miss it! And be sure you do your piece to ensure that we can buy the piano by the end of the day! We thank you, the pianists thank you, the culture thanks you, and you can thank yourself too!