Charlie McCarthy, saxophones and flute Si Perkoff, piano Glen Deardorff, guitar Chuck Bennett, bass Tony Johnson, drums with guest vocalist Darlene Langston Bassist Al Obidinski, a wonderfully funny, droll, down to earth & supremely hip bass player, one of the great human beings, passed away last month. We’re more than sad that he’s gone. This evening, his bandstand colleagues in the long-running residence of the 230 Jones Street band created and nurtured by the late tenor player Chuck Peterson and now led by drummer Tony Johnson will pay tribute with special attention to some tunes Al played during his time with Benny Goodman and stories from many decades of friendship. Bring your own beverage and some dough to help us pay these six musicians! $20-30 donation requested, though you needn’t let lack of funds keep you home. Come help us celebrate a fine jazz musician, and donate what you can.…

The tradition resumes! The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble travels out of Chicago each February for a tour with stops all around the country. Percussionist Kahil El’Zabar leads the trio, featuring Corey Wilkes on trumpet and Alex Harding on baritone sax. The EHE first visited Bird & Beckett in February 2017 and made stops here in February 2018 and 2019, and on January 31, 2020, before the pandemic put a stop to their travels for two years. We’re delighted to have them return! $30 cover charge. Cash please, at the door. Reservations highly suggested. Call 415-586-3733. Doors open 15 minutes before the show. BYOB. Sir Kahil El’Zabar was born in 1953 in Chicago, attended Kennedy-King and Malcolm X City Colleges of Chicago before enrolling at Lake Forest College, in Lake Forest, Illinois, and also studied at the University of Ghana. In 1969, El’Zabar performed with Eugene Ammons in St. Louis and Cincinnati.…

Black Fire This Time An Ensemble of Jazz & Poetry Poets Avotcja Venus Jones Shizue Seigel Christl Rikka Perkins Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart Nazela Jamison Bryant Bolling Dondi Dancy Music Avotcja, small percussion Heshima Mark Williams, bass Heather Buchanan, piano Readings with jazz, from contributors to the new and acclaimed anthology from Willow Press — Black Fire This Time — a collection of over 100 poets and writers on the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement, edited by Dr. Kim McMillon and assistant editor Kofi Antwi. With special guests from Write Now! SF Bay. This event at Bird & Beckett occurs on the eve of The National Black American Read-In (NBARI), a celebration of excellence by Black poets, writers and playwrights, kicking off officially with an event at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) on February 23, 2023 and running throughout the year. No cover charge, but your…

The mind of Ibn Arabi, says Walker, is like a mountain range, from which vast ecosystems of thought are continuously created.  He’ll assay to take you there to have a look at the nearness of this mind to us, in time-and-space terms, as well as take in a bit of the distance involved, as it relates to our on-going human journey. Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) was a key mystic, philosopher and poet of the 500-year Islamic “Golden Era” that dates from the 8th century. Look for Bird & Beckett’s live streams on our YouTube channel and Facebook page. ____________________________ Walker Talks is a monthly talk (save the summer months) that Walker Brents III has been offering the Bird & Beckett community on diverse topics since the early days of the bookshop, beginning shortly after the turn of the century. During the summers, with his wife Joyce, he travels up the coast…

Wayne de Silva, saxophone Brad Buethe, guitar Peter Barshay, bass Brian Melvin, drums $20 cash cover charge at the door. BYOB. Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Brian Melvin remembers when he was 5 years old in San Francisco fascinated by Ringo Starr’s swing on the drum kit with the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, getting a drum with a cymbal attached that Christmas shortly after he turned 6,  and at age 7 meeting Buddy Rich at Bimbo’s 365 Club. Buddy genially gave Brian a pair of sticks, his album “Big Swing Face,” a picture and a friendship that lasted up until Buddy’s departure five years ago. Not long after, he was grooving on the music exploding in the Haight Ashbury, especially the Grateful Dead and its drummers. Soon, the drumming of Jerry Granelli profoundly influenced him. “Jerry was just so different,” writes Brian, “and brought the mystical into…

On the third Sunday of each month, we’re delighted to present the Vince Lateano Trio playing two sets, for the pure pleasure of it. Vince Lateano, drums Peter Barshay, bass Ben Stolorow, piano byob and a twenty for the trio! Vince Lateano has been a marvelous presence on the San Francisco scene since he came to the City in the mid-1960s. He quickly worked his way into the local jazz scene, playing, recording and touring with Vince Guaraldi, subbing around town for Johnny Markham when Markham went on the road with Sinatra and other major acts, and working extensively with Cal Tjader, Eddie Duran, Chet Baker, Clare Fisher and a host of others through the years… Later, all through the 1990s ’til it closed as such in 2003, he was the house drummer at Jazz at Pearl’s in North Beach, playing with his own trio several nights a week and…

Jane Lenoir, flute Ricardo Peixoto, 7-string guitar Brian Rice, pandeiro with special guest Paul Hanson, bassoon $20 cash cover charge at the door, byob Reservations, call (415) 586-3733 The Berkeley Choro Ensemble (pronounced “shoro”) is a group of world-class musicians from the SF Bay Area that made its debut in January, 2010 at the Berkeley Public Library with founding member Harvey Wainapel, presently on hiatus. The group celebrates the music, culture and history of Brazil, with a special emphasis on choro, a genre and style of music which emerged in the 1800s in Brazil, fusing the music of Brazil’s European immigrants and the native music of Brazil’s indigenous and African-Brazilian population. In particular, the choro sound is somewhat akin to a combination of European classical music, ragtime and blues. Historically, the choro style influenced Brazil’s most famous classical composer, Heitor Villa Lobos, to compose some of the world’s most hauntingly…

Filling in for Scott Foster on his traditional third Friday booking at Bird & Beckett, we offer a stellar trio of drummer Sylvia Cuenca, bassist Peter Barshay and pianist Ben Stolorow, performing for you from 5:30 to 8:00pm.    Peter and Ben are stalwart members of Vince Lateano’s trio, which has a third-Sundays residency at Bird & Beckett throughout 2023. And this coming third Sunday (2/19), Peter will pull a double, playing with the Lateano trio at from 5 to 7pm, then anchoring a quartet date at 9pm with traveling (from Estonia) drummer Brian Melvin in the company of guitarist Brad Buethe and saxophonist Wayne De Silva. The Lateano trio, Vince, Peter & Ben, also hosts a jam session at Bird & Beckett on the last Sunday of each month from 5 to 7pm! That’s a scene to be at. Be sure to make it on 2/26! But returning to…

BYOB and a twenty for the trio! Doors open at 7:15. Scott Amendola, a drummer, composer and bandleader who’s been a creative force on the Bay Area jazz scene and beyond for four decades, knows all about the power of subtraction. His stripped-down trio SticklerPhonics brings together long-time collaborators Raffi Garabedian on tenor saxophone and trombonist Danny Lubin-Laden, New York-seasoned improvisers who’ve worked together since their formative years in the vaunted Berkeley High Jazz Band, circa 2003, already twenty years ago! The trio has plunged into the unmediated terrain that opens up in the absence of the usual guidelines, “a situation where there’s no bass and no chords,” Amendola has said. He continues, “The sound is ever evolving. We’re really settling in. But there’s also the feeling like there are places to go. We’ve been adding my electronics and Danny bringing in a little looper. We’re just getting started.” With…

Tony Saunders on Bass & Vocals Marc Daniels Guitar Tina Bryant Keys Don Schiff Bass Larry Vann Drums $25, byob Advance reservations – 415-586-3733 You can leave your hat on! Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Tony Saunders & Co. and celebrate as well the 89th anniversary of Tony’s late father Merl Saunders’ birth.   Tony grew up playing music with his father, who put him through the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying piano, but Tony gravitated to the bass and his father launched him on a career that has included four lps as a leader and countless others as sideman, composer and producer. In the mid-1970s, Merl formed the “Aunt Monk” band with Larry Vann on drums and a young Tony on bass — in a super line up that included guitarist Chris Hayes (of Huey Lewis & the News) and saxophonist Martin Fierro (Zero). Fantasy Records released Merl Saunders…

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 Robert Eugene Rubino is a retired newspaper copy editor and sports columnist who has published prose and poetry in various print and online journals. In 2016 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction and in 2022 published three collections: “Aficionado,” prose & poetry, hummingwordpress.com “Vanity Unfair,” poetry, cathexisnorthwestpress.com “Douglas Knocks Out Tyson,” poetry, rawartreview.com Born and raised in New York City, for more than 50 years he has lived in California, including Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, the Gold Country, the San Joaquin Valley and  for 30 years in the North Bay. He currently lives in Palo Alto with his wife, Terry. Karen Llagas’s new chapbook, All Of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. A recipient of the 2022 RHINO Founder’s Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize, an Elizabeth George Award and…

San Francisco journalist Denise Sullivan conducts a monthly series of conversations (the second Sunday of each month from 10-11 a.m.) with The City’s activists, educators, arts and cultural leaders and workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books and viewable on the Bird & Beckett Facebook page and YouTube channel. This month Denise is in conversation with Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, one of San Francisco’s leading experts in environmental toxins and a persistent advocate for environmental justice for residents of the Bayview-Hunters Point community. Sumchai is the founder and principal investigator for the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program, founding chair of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board’s Radiological Subcommittee and contributor to the 2005 Draft Historical Radiological Assessment and medical director of Golden State MD Health & Wellness, a UCSF and Stanford trained author and researcher, and…

original latin jazz rock fusion explosion! Adrian Areas proudly carries a tradition that encompasses all the San Francisco jazz rock fusion history that constellates around the Azteca/Malo/Santana years. His uncle Chepito was right in the midst of that wonderful maelstrom. Thomas Molina, trumpet Josh Icban, guitar Jeff Patterson, bass Jimmy Toor, drums Adrian Areas, Moperc tumbadoras $25 cash cover charge. Doors open at 7:20 for the 7:30 show BYOB and a mask. Live in the shop! You can also take it in live streamed on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Donate if you can!

Eric Shifrin has brought the In Crowd to Bird & Beckett countless times in the past twenty years, but it’s never been enough! He’s been the favorite of the swells & the swindlers in the finest saloons and boites of this town for decades, and when he brings the In Crowd in here, we’re all in. So now, we’ve invited him to come into Bird & Beckett every second Friday, for the happiest 2.5-hour happy hour you’ll find. This Friday, he’s featuring the wonderful Lara Louise on guitar and vocals, and the marvelous Simon Planting on bass. You may arrive in a mood shaped by the travails of the working week, but when you leave at 8 you’ll be singing a different, snappier tune– we can assure you of that! BYOB and a twenty for the musicians! On the skids or the dole? Bring what you can afford and sip…

Pieces to be read this evening from the anthology will include: Janet Alvarado’s Introduction to Claming Our Stories – read by the author/editor Albert A. Acena’s “Where Have the Nurses Gone? – read by Laarni San Juan Rhys Alvarado’s “1946” – read by Alohi Alvarado Emil Guillermo’s “Centennial Club Members Ricardo and Willie: Filipinos in the Heart of San Francisco” – read by Janet Alvarado Baylan Megino’s “Dancing My Filipino Roots” – read by the author Oscar Peñaranda’s “Babaylan in Playland by the Sea” – read by Edwin Lozada Giulio Sorro’s “My Dad Is a Flower” – read by the author _________________________________________________ Bios of the writers and readers: Alohi Vega Alvarado is native born of Maui, Hawaii. She is an artist, freelance model and designer. In high school, Alohi pursued live theater performance and art.  In 2021, Alohi was featured in underwater fashions by Justin Drew, Fashion Le Cour.  Alohi,…

Ten musicians on the Bird & Beckett stage tonight! Ten musicians to pay! Sliding scale $10-40 cover charge requested. No reservations. No comps.  Only 30 seats! Doors open at 7:15. BYOB.GRUPO OKÁN TOYÉ is an Afro Cuban folkloric troupe dedicated to learning, performing and preserving the musical traditions specifically from Matanzas, Cuba! The group is co-directed and managed by Ahkeel Mestayer and Toribio Villamil, most recently the director of Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas in Cuba. Personnel: Yaimel Villamil Ahkeel Mestayer Christelle Durandy Julio Areas Orlando Torriente Toby Gaster Emilio Davalos Jacki Corona Genesie Reinoso Ceferino Vergara-Tucker

This latest historic match-up between kaleidoscopic pianist Ira Kamin and drummer PC Muñoz is a celebration of their new album, “St. Anne’s Band”, available exclusively on bandcamp. Come experience the battle in person! $10-20 sliding scale cover charge, to help us pay the musicians a guaranteed fair wage! byob

John Calloway, flute & percussion Tony Stead, piano Ollie Dudek, bass Brian Andres, drums   $20 cash cover charge at the door, please! BYOB. For a reservation, call 415-586-3733. Reservations are held until showtime. San Francisco native flautist, composer and arranger Dr. John Calloway has spent the last four decades in the Bay Area as one of the vanguard flute players known nationally in Latin jazz, jazz and Afro-Latino music.  Since returning to the Bay Area in the mid 1980s after a stint in New York, John has performed with Omar Sosa, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Rebeca Mauleon, Marcus Shelby, Jesus Diaz, Wayne Wallace, Kularts and Quijerema, and has had an almost 50-year working collaborative relationship with Bay Area legend John Santos.  He has performed internationally in Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Europe, Singapore and the Philippines; he has composed and arranged music for GRAMMY nominated projects and for films, including “Hemingway &…

She’s back! Come hear the boogie woogie & blues maven Wendy DeWitt blow the house down with her partner Kirk Harwood on drums and the inestimable blues guitarist Takezo Takeda, the Soul Man from Japan! BYOB and a twenty for the trio! Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Here’s the trio’s last Bird & Beckett show! Check it out… Wendy caught the attention of Western Swing Hall of Famer Tommy Thomsen (Sonoma) at age 10, and hasn’t stopped since. Former pianist for Hank Ballard and Steve Freund, Wendy has also played with Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Charlie Musselwhite, Otis Rush and Jimmy Thackery. She tours national and international festivals and produces the annual Queens of Boogie Woogie and San Francisco International Boogie Woogie Festival, which draws artists from around the world. “All the cool kids already know DeWitt is one smoking boogie woogie piano/organ gal and it’s time for the word to…

Bird & Beckett presents featured poets and an open mic on the first Thursday of each month, hosted by Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz. James Cagney’s second poetry collection, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness is the winner of the 2021 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. His first, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2018. Both titles are available from Nomadic Press. For more information, please visit JamesCagneypoet.com. Tureeda Mikell, is an Oakland native, award winning poet, MoAD 2022 Poet in Residence, original Black Panther alum, griot, story medicine woman, Qi Reader, author, and educator. She has published over 70 at-risk student anthologies from 5 bay area counties.  Hailed, activist for holism hell bent on asserting life, her works have been published and or traveled from Africa, France, UK, Australia, Japan, and China. Her book, Synchronicity:…

Vince Lateano, drums Peter Barshay, bass Ben Stolorow, piano All jazz players welcome to take the stage. Or just come to listen. No cover charge. If you can’t make it into the shop, you can catch the live stream on our Facebook page or YouTube channel.  Your donations to help pay the trio and support the stream are much appreciated! Bird & Beckett adheres to the guaranteed fair wage standard promoted by the Independent Musicians Alliance.

Gerald Beckett, flute Michael Gold, saxophone Greg Jacobs, piano Carl Herder, bass Greg German, drums $25 cover charge; byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Streamed live on our YouTube channel and Facebook page. Born and raised in Texas, flutist Gerald Beckett is a stalwart of the San Francisco music scene. Eight years of classical training at the San Francisco Conservatory, combined with extensive jazz studies with some of the leading teachers in the Bay Area, has left Beckett with a firm command of both his instrument and the jazz idiom. About his most recent CD, his sixth, Downbeat Magazine had this to say: A common juke-joint sound is pervasive on several of flutist Gerald Beckett’s compositions—particularly on “Down Low,” “Club Raven” and “Shacktown.” Each tune has a rollicking mood that resonates with a gut-bucket blues feeling. But there are other sounds on MOOD, and none more chocked with hard-bop ingredients than “Minor…

Shake off the workweek with a happy hour or two in the company of veteran drummer Tony Johnson and his merry crew — Bob Kenmotsu on tenor saxophone, Keith Saunders on piano and Matt Montgomery on upright bass. Two solid sets of straight ahead jazz & bebop, swing & bossa nova. Tony has been plying his trade in San Francisco since he immigrated from Australia in 1959. Straight off, he was busy in the clubs and on the road — and recorded a memorable album live at The Cellar on Grant Avenue in North Beach in 1960 with vocalist Bev Kelly, in the company of saxophonist Pony Poindexter. He’s never stopped since. BYOB and a twenty for the band! Can’t make it to the show? On Fridays, we’ll be streaming just the second set, starting at about 7pm. To hear the first set, you’ll need to brave the elements and…

All open mic! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211

Timothy Orr•drums/percussion Mark Clifford•vibraphone Safa Shokrai•double bass Max Judelson•double bass Heikki “Mike” Koskinen•e-trumpet/recorder Joshua Marshall•tenor saxophone Rent Romus•alto saxophone $25-35 sliding scale to support these seven musicians! byob reservations: 415-586-3733 live stream (please donate) on the Bird & Beckett YouTube channel and Facebook page. Rent Romus’ Life’s Blood Ensemble pays tribute as well as brings to light, reinvents, deconstructs, and delves into the deep realms of their collective vision. Their repertoire features original composition and contemporary local and international composers while exploring the influences and inspirations from free improvisation, jazz, folk, and world. This performance @ the iconic Bird & Beckett Books will feature new music, some of which will be debuted as part of a new recording project “In the Spirit”. more information: http://romus.net/lifesblood.html https://youtu.be/pfST5WMY2dM https://soundcloud.com/rent-romus/manala-demo Rent Romus is a saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, music producer, and community activist. Since 1988, his work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious”…

devorah major, San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate (2002-2004), is an award-winning poet and fiction writer, a creative non-fiction writer, performer, editor, and part-time senior adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. She was poet-in-residence of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for 28 years. devorah has toured Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and all over the United States performing her poetry and speaking on panels focused on African-American poetry, Beat poetry, and poetry of resistance. She is the author of two novels and six books of poetry. Her fifth book of poetry, and then we became was published by City Lights in 2016 and her sixth, Califa’s Daughter was published by Willow Books in 2020. Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California U.S.A. Allen is active in creative writing and spoken word since the early 1990s. Under POOR Press, he has published four…

Get ready for a Hammond Organ Party with the Wayne De La Cruz Organ Trio with Tony Alvis, saxophone and Mark Lee, drums. $20 cash cover charge. BYOB. Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Doors open at 7:20. Can’t make it to the shop tonight? Donate and take in the show through the live stream on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. Wayne De La Cruz started on drums at age 9, moving on to vibes in middle school and organ in high school. A Baldwin spinet organ, it didn’t have the sound Wayne had in mind, a sound he remembered from the time his father took him to hear Ray Charles in 1968, when Billy Preston was at the keys of a Hammond B-3. In 1973, Wayne began his professional career, playing his first paying gig on Hammond organ at the age of 16. The Baldwin had been traded in for a…

Guitarist Scott Foster carries all the twenty years’ tradition of jazz in the bookshop! And beginning with this January 2023 third-Friday date, he returns our 2-1/2 hour Friday jazz “happy hour” to its original start time of 5:30pm. Henceforth, on Fridays you’ll find jazz in the bookshop from 5:30 to 8:00pm every week! Lose the tensions of the work week at Bird & Beckett with old and new friends. BYOB and a twenty for the band! (Sundays, you’ll often find live music with a 5pm start time — check our calendar. Saturdays and other weeknights, you can generally count on a 7:30pm start with doors opening 10 minutes before showtime – check our calendar for that, too!  Reservations are gladly taken by phone – 415-586-3733 – for the evening shows. We don’t generally take reservations for the Friday and Sunday shows unless you have a specific need for a chair.) …