Becca Stevens and The Secret Trio at Miner Auditorium
On the third night of Michael League’s SFJAZZ residency, Becca Stevens and The Secret Trio delivered an inward-focused performance shaped by storytelling, mastery, and close listening.
Becca Stevens. Photo: Steve Roby
Saturday’s program at Miner Auditorium unfolded at close range. Rather than building momentum through volume or density, the music favored patience—allowing songs to arrive gradually, shaped as much by silence as by sound. It was a night that trusted attention over spectacle, and it asked the audience to listen accordingly.
League has shaped the residency as a sequence rather than a showcase. Each night reveals a unique facet of the same sensibility, calibrated with the care of a tasting menu. This third program leaned toward intimacy. The music asked the audience to meet it at eye level.
The evening centered on Becca Stevens and her collaboration with The Secret Trio, with League joining in a largely supporting role. Stevens’ last appearance at SFJAZZ was in October, when she performed in the Joe Henderson Lab, presenting material from her album Maple and Paper. Returning in a very different room, she adjusted her approach accordingly. Seated center stage, she treated Miner Auditorium less as a space to project into than as one to share widely.
The set opened with “Flow In My Tears,” immediately establishing the ensemble’s tone. Stevens played the 10-string charango, her voice woven into the texture. League anchored the music on acoustic bass, occasionally shading the edges with Moog. The Secret Trio shaped the music’s internal motion, letting rhythms and complex harmony breathe without urgency.
Although League organized the residency and helped bring this collaboration to life, his onstage presence remained deliberately understated. Saturday marked the first time the full five-piece group had performed together in concert, even though the album had been recorded six years earlier. The music did not arrive as a long-delayed unveiling. It felt more like a conversation that had simply found the right room.
League recounted how the project began at the GroundUP Music Festival, where a late-night Secret Trio set left Stevens transfixed. What followed—an introduction, a brief exchange, and a studio session weeks later—set the tone for the evening. Many of the songs, Stevens added, began as small ideas recorded on the back of the Snarky Puppy tour bus and later layered and refined in collaboration.
Several pieces were introduced with care. Stevens spoke about setting poetry by the Macedonian poet Nikola Madžirov for “The Eye,” and about returning to “Pathways,” inspired by a Rainer Maria Rilke poem she had nearly left behind before it found its place on the record. The stories clarified intent without overwhelming the music.
Ismail Lumanovski. Photo: Steve Roby
In The Secret Trio, individual voices emerged without disturbing the collective balance. Clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski’s G clarinet shifted the room’s center of gravity, its darker register carrying a vocal weight. Oudist Ara Dinkjian provided melodic grounding, while master kanunist Tamer Pınarbaşı generated rhythmic motion that felt both percussive and suspended. The trio never strained for scale. Their presence came from precision.
Ara Dinkjian. Photo: Steve Roby
Late in the set, League introduced “Vazgeçtim,” tracing its path from composition to a cultural touchstone in Turkey. The story reframed authorship and belonging, underscoring how songs travel far beyond their origins. The performance leaned into shared recognition, grounded in collective memory.
The main set closed with “California,” by Charlotteesville native Paul Carrera, presented as a song discovered through personal connection rather than industry channels. Its mood remained balanced—melancholy without sentimentality—held steady by the ensemble’s restraint.
Michael League, Becca Stevens, and The Secret Trio. Photo: Steve Roby
For the encore, Stevens returned alone for “Heather’s Letters to Her Mother.” She spoke about writing the song after a challenge from David Crosby and about finding her way into it by inhabiting the voice of the late Heather Heyer, who was killed in 2017 in a white supremacist car attack in Charlottesville. As the house lights came up and the audience joined her invitation to sing the refrain, “We’ve got nothing without love,” the moment remained communal and tender.
What distinguished this third night of the residency was coherence across differences. Where earlier programs emphasized expansion, this one centered on trust: in the material, in the room, and in the audience’s willingness to listen closely.
Program Notes
Event: Becca Stevens, Michael League & The Secret Trio
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2026
Showtime: 7:30 p.m.
Venue: Miner Auditorium, San Francisco
Personnel
Becca Stevens (lead vocals, guitar, charango) and Michael League (acoustic bass, Moog, background vocals). The Secret Trio: Ara Dinkjian (oud), Ismail Lumanovski (G clarinet), Tamer Pınarbaşı (kanun).
Setlist: “Flow In My Tears,” “The Eye,” “We Were Wrong,” “11 Roses,” “Pathways,” “Lucian,” “Worm,” “Maria,” “Lullaby For The Sun,” “Vazgeçtim,” “Bring It Back,” “California”
Encore: “Heather's Letters To Her Mother”
Tech staff for this concert
Lighting Designer: Matt Moreau
Production Manager: Colby Jensen
Special visual effects: Jasna Bogdanovska
Read our feature article about Michael League’s residency at SFJAZZ.
