On the last Sunday of each month, drummer Vince Lateano conducts a jam session for all comers, this month with pianist Parker Grant and bassist Robb Fisher sitting in for Vince’s regular trio partners, Ben Stolorow and Peter Barshay. Ben and Peter are away on assignment (getting traveling drummer Ron Vincent primed for his date at Bird & Beckett on Friday, June 2nd followed by two nights at Keys on the weekend). No charge to attend or play in the jam session, though your contributions are certainly welcome and appreciated to stake us to the trio’s guarantee. Most always a surprise or two, always a pleasure. It’s byob at Bird & Beckett, so if you want something to sip, bring it with you.

John Calloway, flute Murray Low, piano Fred Randolph, bass Ricky Aguilar, percussion Annette A Aguilar, drums, percussion, vocals $20-30 sliding scale cover charge (cash please!) BYOB, Reservations: 415-586-3733 We can never get enough of Carnaval! We’ve got a descarga’s cargo of rhythm for you in the bookshop with NYC drummer & bandleader Annette A Aguilar, a San Francisco native and a world citizen of the music with a wonderful band. Catch them Saturday night at Bird & Beckett!

Trumpeter Mike Olmos fronts the Tony Johnson Quartet tonight at Bird & Beckett, with Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass, evoking countless nights of cocktails & beers, bebop & ballads, burners & bossas, standards & jazz classics at Jay Johnson’s venerable, now-gone bastion of San Francisco Jazz! Man, do we miss it! Catch the flavor this evening at Bird & Beckett’s 20+ years running Jazz Happy Hour in the Bookshop! Bring something to sip and a twenty for the band. That’ll git it! Photos courtesy Dennis Hearne (Featured photo, Tony Johnson, courtesy Jessica Levant)    

If you’re of a certain age, you well remember the brouhaha kicked up by Led Zeppelin when Little Roger & the Goosebumps launched their was-gonna-be-a-hit-record-but-immediately-embargoed “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” back in 1978 on Berserkley Records, the little East Bay hit factory that gave us Earth Quake (“Friday On My Mind”), The Rubinoos (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), Greg Kihn (“Hurt So Bad”) and, the king of ’em all, Jonathan Richman, who went from “Road Runner” and “I’m in Love with the Modern World” to “Ice Cream Man” and enduring permanence in the rock firmament. Dick Bright alongside Roger Clark was at the core of Little Roger et al, the hardest working bar band in the Bay Area and up and down the coast back then. Dick’s been in the business ever since, grinding out a blue collar workin’ life in a tux as the bandleader at the Fairmount’s Venetian Room…

Kim Shuck hosts our zoomed 2nd and 4th Monday poetry readings – with featured poets and an open mic on the 2nd Monday of each month, and an all-open-mic format on the 4th Mondays. Tonight, it’s the all open mic version! Zoom in and bring a poem to read, or just come to enjoy the poets’ work! Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211  

Kierkegaard the poetic philosopher. Long honored as a founding spirit of what came to be called Existentialism, Kierkegaard’s appeal is even more hydra-headed than this. His ruling inspiration is to bring his readers into a deeper sense of themselves as they encounter the themes and metaphors which appear so richly in so many ways throughout his writings. We come to see him as a singular exemplar of a unique moral passion, gifted with numberless insights which only grow more profound as the ages roll on… Walker Brents III regales us with 90 minutes of cogent insight into the workings of the poetico-philosophical mind in one guise or another most every month, though he travels the byways of the American west in the summer and skips a few for that. Tune in to his talk via our Facebook page or YouTube channel. No in-store audience except by special request. Once you’re…

Gail Dobson, vocals Kam Mombasser, guitar Aaron Cohn, bass Omar Aran, drums and special guests $20 cover charge (cash please) Reservations, call 415-586-3733 BYOB Gail Dobson, a native-born San Franciscan with a smoky, amber contralto, traces her performance history to legendary North Beach haunts including the Purple Onion, the Hungry i and the Jazz Workshop, as well as the Bach, Dancing, and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay. For 23 years, she’s been the featured vocalist for Ray Brown’s Great Big Band, and she leads her own combos.Says Gail, “I’m a Jazz Singer, Recording Artist, Vocal Teacher, Mom, Grandma. I’ve sung all my life and have shared this blessing with my first husband, pianist George Muribus, with my late husband, Smith Dobson, pianist/singer, and with my children, Sasha Dobson, a fellow vocalist, and Smith Dobson V, a drummer, vibraphonist, saxophonist. I’ve experienced first hand what hard work and dedication, mixed…

Rebecca Faulker is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Her work has been anthologized in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 and published in journals in the UK and USA. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. The poems in her debut collection, Permit Me to Write My Own Ending (Write Bloody Press, 2023) span generations and timescapes – from gritty, defiant explorations of a London adolescence, to haunting poems detailing love and adulthood in the US. Faulkner’s language and form dissects the emotional impact of historical trauma, navigating and sharply reframing nationality and memory, interiority and…

Jim Witzel, guitar Dann Zinn, saxophone Brian Ho, organ Jason Lewis, drums $20 cover charge; BYOB Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Tonight at Bird & Beckett, Jim Witzel’s working quartet draws on original material from their current release, Feelin’ It, along with pieces from Jim’s album Give and Take, with a few standard tunes thrown in for good measure. Born and raised in the North Bay, Jim studied under John Handy at San Francisco State and went on to freelance extensively around the Bay Area, working clubs and concerts as both a leader and sideman with such players as Mark Isham, Art Lande, Mike Clark, Delbert Bump, Michael Barsimanto, Glenn Cronkite, Mike Formanek, Chris Amberger and Tod Dickow. During this period he joined the “Life is Color” band along with vocalist Jesse Foster and vibist Jon Ericson, and hosted a weekly television series “Jazz After Midnight.” Jim studied under guitarist Howard Roberts…

Tonight: The Scott Foster Quartet conducts “Further Experiments with Tom Hassett” Tom Hassett, drums Dan Seamans bass Jim Peterson sax Scott Foster, guitar Musical journeys flowing from the mind of Mr. Hassett, including repertoire from the John Scofield Quartet, Billy Strayhorn, Bill Evans and others Scott Foster has been bringing jazz to Bird & Beckett for twenty-plus years on Fridays, beginning in late 2002–when it was a weekly engagement for years with the late tenor player Chuck Peterson leading the band. Now, Scott leads his own combos and shares the Fridays with a passel of other bands, still holding down the third Friday of each month, 5:30 to 8:00pm. It’s the cornerstone booking in our jazz calendar. Scott is a supremely talented and versatile player, composer and jazz educator, always a pleasure to hear. Come down and find out for yourself. BYOB and a twenty for the band. Pay just…

A mainstay of the San Francisco jazz scene for years, bassist Adam Gay decamped for Brooklyn several years ago, where he’s been brewing beer and playing jazz, much to Brooklyn’s benefit and San Francisco’s loss! But he’s coming back to town for some good gigs, and one of them is at Bird & Beckett in the company of some old friends, colleagues and artistes. A quintet date that will fill you with pure joy, we assure you! Erik Jekabson, trumpet & flugelhorn James Mahone, sax Keith Saunders, piano Adam Gay, bass James Gallagher, drums $20 cover charge tonight for the quintet! It’s a bargain, to welcome Adam back. Cash please! BYOB  

Way out west… The Seducers — America’s favorite Honky Tonk band! Joe Goldmark, pedal steel       Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Tim Wagar, bass guitar       Paul Revelli, drums The Seducers play Bird & Beckett every other month – January, March, May, July, September, November – on the second Sunday of the month at 5pm. Alternating months feature a fine batch of San Francisco’s best Americana bands. There’s a little sin and seduction in each of us. And we’re all either a mother or came from one. Or both in some cases, come to think of it! Join us to celebrate! BYOB and a twenty for the band!

The short stories gathered in Angelo Presicci’s book, Fighting the Bad War present a vivid, first person account of realities that faced American soldiers in our war on North Vietnam and upon their return home. Published by Robert Anbien’s Night Horn Books in early 2022, Fighting the Bad War  has been republished and relaunched by Iven Lourie’s Artemis Press, which took on the book after Anbien passed away late last year. In November 1966, Angelo Presicci found himself manning an M50 machine gun atop an armored personnel carrier in the jungles of Vietnam’s Tay Ninh Province. He was a 22-year-old gay draftee from a small town in upstate New York. The linked stories in Fighting the Bad War are based on Presicci’s experiences in battle and on the long way home from America’s most unpopular war, the last entrusted to a citizen army. This was not their fathers’ good war.…

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 lesser-known workers, the everyday people who help make this place we call home, live streamed from Bird & Beckett Books Today’s guest is Malia Spanyol, who owns four unique small businesses in San Francisco and her most recent brainchild is Mother Bar. The queer and femme-centered space is located in the Mission, which has historically held space for queer/lesbian communities (despite price-outs and gentrification). Spanyol’s experience as a small business owner in the city – including the Muay Thai gym Woodenman, Thee Parkside, and La Lucha coffee shop – naturally led her to the creation of Mother Bar, dedicated to continuing lesbian culture in the Mission. Catch the conversation between Malia and Denise on Sunday 5/14 at 10, live streamed…

Matt Renzi runs bands in San Francisco, New York and Rome. The son of a celebrated musician who was the long-time principal flutist for the San Francisco Symphony (60 years, beginning in 1944), whose own father played oboe for Arturo Toscanini and whose grandfather was an organist at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome who knew Verdi, music is in Matt’s blood. He’s also a super nice guy with a sense of humor and a quick intellect, and talented in the extreme — it goes without saying, though we’ve said it. He’s assembled a first class band for the evening. You should come hear! Matt Renzi, reeds Dahveed Behroozi, piano Joshua Thurston-Milgrom, bass Tim Bulkley, drums BYOB and a twenty for the band, if you please. No one’s ever turned away for lack of dough, so pay what you can. But if you’ve got it, we need it to help us…

Kim Shuck, San Francisco’s 7th poet laureate, now emerita, and more vital than ever, has been hosting a zoomed poetry reading for Bird & Beckett since way back, early pandemic… it continues. We’re grateful for the fabulous ways in which she extends the bookshop’s boundaries. Tonight, she’s invited Norma Smith and Gail Mitchell to read, and hosts the Bay Area’s most vital open mic, without exception. Zoom link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09   Norma Smith is a writer and semi-retired community scholar-educator living in Berkeley, California. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poets Reading the News, Thanatos Review, The Racket and Despues del Aguacero: A Pan Dulce Anthology. The invaluable Nomadic Press published Norma’s book of poems, Home Remedy (2017). We regret that Nomadic has drifted on, as nomads are wont to do. Norma writes, “In the beginning was the word and I’ve drawn on it, to map the internal…

Keith Saunders, piano Eric Markowitz, bass Smith Dobson V, drums Remembering the Deluxe…

Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School Jazz Ensemble, directed by bassist Fred Randolph.

Cecilia Perez Urias – jarana, vocals, zapateado Diego Perez – bass guitar Dan Neville – vibes, marimba Andres Reyes – tambór and cununo $20 cover charge (cash please). No one turned away for lack of funds. Admission in the last half hour is $5 upon request. BYOB. Created in Mexico City by Cecilia Perez Urias and Diego Perez, Saltapatrás combines music with narrative theater, featuring a repertoire infusing original compositions with rhythms and traditional Mexican aesthetics, blending in jazz and Colombian forms. Their presentation is both aural and visual. Tonight’s concert features the Bay Area’s own and now New York-based Dan Neville on marimba and vibraphone, and Colombian musician Andres Reyes, also now based in New York, on the percussion (tambór and cununo). Leading into the Bird & Beckett Saturday night concert, Saltapatrás will give a workshop and performance Friday in celebration of Cinco de Mayo at La Peña in…

This is where it all begins! Where the future comes into view afresh with every sunrise! Sunnyside Elementary School’s brilliant young students produce “The Ray” once a year — their own literary journal! They’re coming to Bird & Beckett this Sunday, from 2-3pm, to deliver the word! Turn out to hear them and to let them know we value their talents, energy and insights. Culture starts anew every day, building on long traditions! Great writing and art make for a great future! Thanks to a grant from the Glen Park Association for the 2023 publication of The Ray, the good folks at Sunnyside School are helping their students showcase their artwork and spoken word in local community spaces for all to enjoy.

David Hardiman, Jr., trumpet Charles Hamilton, trombone Hal Richards, tenor sax Cory Wright, baritone sax Karl Evangelista, guitar David Parker, bass Valentino Peeps, drums Come out for the late set at the Bird & the Beckett to get a taste of a deep and moody and slammin’ septet led by bassist David Parker and featuring six more top flight local players. $20-30 sliding scale (cash please), byob. David loves the classic jazz composers and loves rhythm and the blues, the bass, the bari and the ‘bone. His arrangements delve deep into that low register for a rhythm-forward swing through classic compositions by jazz giants Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, Eric Dolphy and J. S. Bach. Way back at the turn of the century, when Bird & Beckett was just getting into swing on Diamond Street (where Manzoni now cooks up delicious Northern Italian…

Erik Jekabson, trumpet/flugelhorn Sheldon Brown, saxophones/flutes Murray Low, piano Fred Randolph, bass/compositions Isaac Schwartz, drums $20-25 is suggested for quintets (cash or venmo, please), but no one is turned away for lack of funds. Pay what you can at our Friday evening jazz happy hours! Byob if you think you’re going to get thirsty! Fred Randolph brings his fiery quintet to Bird & Beckett for an afternoon of all original music with jazz, funk, latin, and world music influences.  Of the band’s June 2020 cd “Mood Walk,” filled with Fred Randolph originals, JW Vibe calls it a “Stylistically eclectic, supremely grooving, endlessly fascinating masterwork…a rambunctious, twist, turn and improvisation-filled set.” Tune in particularly at about the 3:10 mark in the video below to get a taste of saxophonist Sheldon Brown and trumpeter Erik Jekabson, two core members of tonight’s ensemble, featured on Fred’s “Mood Walk” cd. And play the whole…

Sheldon Brown – Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet Ben Goldberg – Bb and Bass Clarinets John Wiitala – Bass Tim Bulkley – Drums $20 cash cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Sheldon writes: Ben and I have been playing together for longer than he or I can remember. We’ve played together with Clarinet Thing, with Darren Johnston’s groups, Graham Connah’s various ensembles, etc., etc., but one of our favorite settings is playing in the “chord-less quartet” format. We started doing that many years ago with an original music project called “Papa’s Midnight Hop” (after the Steve Lacy tune), and after that project ended we kept working in the quartet format doing music of Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk. For this show the focus will be on our own music, with a healthy dose of Nichols/Monk. Joining us will be two of my favorite musicians, the extraordinary bassist John Wiitala and superlative…

Ashia Ajani’s position as poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Museum of the African Diaspora was announced just days ago, and her poetry debut Heirloom is newly published by Write Bloody Publishing. Speaking from both a place of restoration and vengeance, Heirloom explores concepts of spiritual nourishment, physical and emotional sacrifice, environmental injustice, sexuality, waste colonialism, abolition, and Black migration; these poems seek to address the trauma felt from environmental injustice and the familial wounds that are passed down as a result of historical neglect. A descendant of W.E.B DuBois’s concept of “sorrow songs,” Heirloom analyzes our environmental pasts and presents in order to inform our environmental future. Through bird song, jazz, symbiosis, land loss, insect interactions, travel, desire and a whole lot of love and reverence for the unspoken, Heirloom reveals the ingrained connections between Blackness and ecological survival. Ashia is an Oakland resident, a Black storyteller and an environmental…

The intensity of individual, mob and institutional attacks on working journalists and their media outlets is unmistakable in our current age. World Press Freedom Day pushes back. So, too, does the work of many thousands of individuals locally and worldwide who take the tools of journalism in hand to accurately report the news they encounter in their day-to-day lives in order to responsibly and effectively inform their communities on issues of immense immediate importance. After the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, the city of Portland, Oregon – one of the whitest towns in America – erupted in 200 days and nights of protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police violence. In the same moment, activists and observers – including everyday people who started out simply pointing their phones at the rapidly escalating police violence – launched a…

Join your friends from Bird & Beckett this Sunday, April 30th at Keys Jazz Bistro–Broadway at Kearny in North Beach–for a five-hour cavalcade of great San Francisco jazz musicians coming together in the Independent Musicians Alliance to build labor solidarity and jamming to fill the coffers of the IMA’s “Musicians Assistance Fund.” The IMA, born a scant year ago and growing like Topsy through grit, hard work and determination, is giving the City’s freelance musicians a collective voice, while the Fund is easing its members’ manifold economic stresses by making grants to members for rehearsals, gig cancellations, instrument repair, storage, cartage, travel and parking, and quite a lot more. Bird & Beckett and Jazz in the Neighborhood’s Mario Guarneri came together to stake the IMA to $8k to get the fund rolling and $5k+ has been given out in the past six months. This Sunday, we want to raise $5k…

Drummer Tony Johnson’s 230 Jones Street Band kicks off the weekend at 5:30pm Friday the 28th, with Bob Kenmotsu, saxophone; Si Perkoff, piano; and Chuck Bennett, long-time veterans of the San Francisco and New York jazz scenes. $20 donation appreciated, byob. Find your happy hour at Bird & Beckett every Friday right up to 8pm, then grab a taco at La Corneta or a beer at Glen Park Station and return at 9pm for the late set. Friday, 9-10:30pm: “Those who drink the water must remember those who dug the well.” Guitarist and LifeForce Jazz Recording Artist and Producer Brother Khalil Abdullah returns to Bird & Beckett for a night of gratitude and remembrance; a night of celebrating and honoring the roots of this beautiful music called jazz. Br Khalil is joined by an incredible band featuring Murray Low on piano, Mark Heshima Williams on bass, and Deszon Claiborne on…

Amoranalysis is literary deconstruction for the purpose of interpreting and emanating Amor. So says Ben Bac Sierra… novelist, CCSF writing teacher, lowrider, San Francisco native… He continues, We do not know what life is or where or when it begins or ends, nor do we know what death is or where or when it begins or ends. We have no idea of time. All we know are moments upon moments, and we do not even know that. We fantasize about words and meaning, while it is all vanishing in front of us. Life. Death. I don’t understand those things, and, ultimately, I don’t care about those things. I know Now, even though I don’t know Now. I am here, and the best of all of this right Now is in Amor. A state of being, a miracle, that puts you in the moment forever, which is only the specific moment.…

Enjoy a classic jazz trio, led by drummer Vince Lateano–a key player on the San Francisco jazz scene since the mid-1960s. Veteran bassist Peter Barshay and the fine young pianist Ben Stolorow join Vince on the third Sunday evening of every month for a deep and pleasurable swing through jazz standards, bop, blues and bossa. Nothing gives us more pleasure than this trio. Byob and fifteen bucks for the band! No reservations needed. Support live jazz & its finest practitioners in a real bookshop!