653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
[email protected]
Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six
Live Streams every weekend!
Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Sweeping across generations, continents, and cultures, The Doctor from Madras (Flexible Press, 2025; paper $19) is the epic story of one family and the collision between old ways and a changing world, the debut novel by Chandru Murthi. “In this multi-generational saga, Chandru Murthi weaves together a patchwork quilt of stories involving agonizing family secrets, the birth pangs of a modern nation and the emergence of a new diaspora into the 21st century. This is a stunningly well-crafted story, and a debut novel to celebrate!” — Raza Mir, author of Murder at the Mushaira A long-time San Franciscan, Chandru Murthi was born in India and has spent most of his life in the United States. He is an engineer and sustainability consultant by training. This left-brain activity has been counterbalanced by working in theatre for many years, maintaining a difficult-to-categorize blog, and writing this, his first novel. The Doctor from Madras…
Read More
Friday the 28th, there’s a 6-8pm show (The Tony Johnson Quartet returns!), then an 8:30-10pm show (The Aaron Germain Quartet). Saturday the 29th, the 7:30-9:30 show features cornet player Marc Caperone driving up from Santa Barbara and trombonist Dan Barrett driving down from Sacramento to co-lead the Unnamable Quartet, a trad jazz outfit with Jeff Hamilton on piano and Benny Amon on drums. And Sunday the 30th, at 5pm there’s a jam session hosted by the Vince Lateano Trio followed at 8pm by the Ryan Ancheta Quartet, with bassist Marcus Shelby adding star power in support of his mentee Ryan, a fabulous young trumpet player. Ryan has solid sender Greg Jacobs on piano and Ryan’s contemporary Miles Turk on drums. Sylvia Cuenca sez Miles is amazing. No one can question Sylvia’s authority on such a topic! Just another amazing weekend at Bird & Beckett Here’s a little something you missed…
Read More
Trumpet player Ryan Ancheta is sneaking a quartet into the shop for a late show Sunday the 30th, with his mentor Marcus Shelby on bass, the veteran tho-still-young Greg Jacobs on piano and Ryan’s contemporary, Miles Turk on drums. Expect two blazing sets of bop, hard bop, post-bop and beyond! $20 cover charge, cash or venmo please. Call the shop for a reservation – 415-586-3733. And note that on Sunday April 6th, from 5-7pm, Ryan, a student at UC Berkeley out of RASOTA, will be back with Miles and three students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ryan’s quintet will stick around to run a jam session open to any student players who want to step up.
Read More
Good news! In mid-September, we signed on with a fiscal sponsor–the 501(c)3 nonprofit Jazz in the Neighborhood–and are now offering tax-deductibility for your donations to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (“BBCLP”). Write your check to Jazz in the Neighborhood and note “BBCLP deductible donation” in the memo line, then drop it off at the shop or mail it to us. We’ll forward it to Jazz in the Neighborhood. Cash is fine if you prefer. Or donate through Paypal, once or on a recurring basis. Bright moments ahead, thanks to you! The BBCLP makes it possible for Bird & Beckett to present live cultural events, paying a guaranteed fair wage to the musicians and at least a modest stipend to our featured poets, and also to pursue our publishing activities. Where it stands now: In 2024, Bird & Beckett celebrated a quarter century in business since our doors opened…
Read More
Bird & Beckett’s events open to the publichave been back since mid-June 2021.Mask up if you’re inclined, and do come in!(Not vaxxed? Please get vaxxed and be safer!) Jazz, poetry & morelive in the shopand live streamed Come to 653 Chenery if you’re in town! Doors open at 7:20 for our 7:30 shows.$20 cover for trios and quartets$25 for quintets, $30 for sextets, etc.Cash at the door please!BYOB and BYOglass, and pack out what you pack in! Please feel free to wear a mask in the shop.We trust the science and its processes,and we trust SF’s DPH to keep us up to date on best practices! Advised best practices as of early September 2021 was to wear a mask indoors around people. If that makes you a little more comfortable being inside this winter, then do feel free. Sure you’re vaccinated and even if you contract the virus it’s unlikely…
Read More
Hungry to hear some of Bird & Beckett’s past live streams? On the home page you can scroll down to read the individual posts for the shows we’ve mounted in the past several months, a hint of what’s gone down since the pandemic lock-down began. In more amazing times, it would take you right back to the very first show of the current period, back on March 12, 2020, but that beautiful skein is no longer quite so easily accessed. Still, the evidence is there for those who dig. The March 12, 2020 show that signaled the shift was a Thursday evening performance by New York saxophonists Jessica and Tony Jones, both alumni of the Berkeley High jazz program, with NYC bassist Stomu Takeishi and local hero Deszon X. Claiborne on drums. The quartet’s booking for the night before at the Backroom over in Berkeley had been cancelled. A few…
Read More
The posts that follow show you what’s come and gone. Search the videos on our youtube channel or facebook page to find evidence of what you remember, or what you missed! Then, make sure you catch the next thing that catches your fancy. The live streams are great, but live music in a room with folks you know or ought to get to know, that’s irreplaceable…
Read More
Allan Harris is on tour out of NYC, and meets up with fellow New Yorker/acclaimed guitarist Freddie Bryant and bi-coastal drummer Sylvia Cuenca–with the estimable Doug Miller on bass–for two sets of poetry inflected jazz and jazz inflected poetry… $30 cover charge; byob. Call the shop to reserve. Harris, long acclaimed for his vocalese, is touring in advance of a fresh album with a superb band, including Sylvia on drums: “Allan Harris Live at the Blue LLama,” recorded live in Ann Arbor. Freddie Bryant was proclaimed “a brilliant young guitarist and composer” by Kenny Burrell right out the gate. Since those youthful years, he’s blazed a brilliant path, and the recording of his epic song cycle with an all-star case, “Upper West Side Love Story” was named by Downbeat as one of the “Best CDs of 2023.” Allan Harris “Poetry of Jazz” “Poetry of Jazz” is where the spoken word…
Read More
Jorge Argueta is in El Salvador at the moment and can’t be back in time for this reading, previously scheduled for March 23rd. We’ll announce a new date when he returns. My First Words in Nahuat is soon to be published; its author, Jorge Tetl Argueta is a celebrated Salvadoran poet and writer whose bi-lingual children’s books have received numerous awards, and his poetry has appeared in anthologies and textbooks. A native Salvadoran and Pipil Nahua Indian, Jorge spent much of his childhood in rural El Salvador. He now resides in San Francisco, where he has been a long-time contributor to the culture. He returns frequently to El Salvador, where he participates in annual poetry festivals and oversees a library that he’s brought into being for young children in the capital, San Salvador. He is certain that everyone can write poems–especially young children, who are natural poets. He won the…
Read More
Joel Behrman, trumpet Jeff Cressman, trombone Tod Dickow, tenor sax Matt Clark, piano Curtis Aikens, bass Greg Gotelli, drums $25 cover per adult; byob $10 teens and students Kids free Drummer Greg Gotelli fields numerous great bands in the Bay Area, from the SF Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston to the Buena Vista Jazz Band with clarinetist Don Neeley to vocalist Lorretta Gooden’s Hammond B3 combo. Many of the great veterans of Bay Area jazz have found a berth with Greg’s groups, including Noel Jewkes, Charlie McCarthy, Erik Jekabson, Si Perkoff, Benny Watson, Al Obidinski, Frank Jackson, Duncan James, Glen Pearson, Chuck Bennett, Denise Perrier, Mike Greensill, Marty Eggers, John Hunt, Andrew Storar, John Clark and a host of others. A modest but dapper guy keeping good time at the kit, Greg is a regular Medici of the Bay Area jazz scene. The personnel in the San Francisco Sextet and…
Read More
Kevin Gerzevitz, piano. Ari Munkres, bass. Tim Bulkley, drums. $20/byob. Students/teen – $10. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Herbie Nichols wrote jazz tunes that are unique and compelling in ways highly appreciated by practitioners of the art, players and composers alike, and by fans, of course. “House Party Starting” is one such tune. Hear it here! And hear Kevin Gerzevitz and his trio bring it to life for you live here at Bird & Beckett! Plus a whole lot more.
Read More
Darren Johnston, trumpet. Bruce Ackley, reeds. Scott Foster, guitar. $20/byob. Students/teens – $10. Kids free. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Scott steps out! The long-time cornerstone of our Friday jazz in the bookshop since 2002, Scott Foster brings all manner of jazz combos every third Friday, and this time out he’s invited two players whose renown in spontaneous improvisation and abstract compositional strategies have made them much loved on both coasts and abroad. Bruce Ackley is one-fourth of the saxophone quartet Rova, which has traveled the festival circuit for decades drawing inspiration from the likes of John Cage, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Charles Ives, Edgard Varése, and Olivier Messiaen. Rova has been on the Bird & Beckett stage twice in the past, and Bruce has taken the stage in a variety of other combinations, as has his Rova partner Larry Ochs. Here’s a link to an Ackley/Foster outing…
Read More
The Cornelius Cardew Choir, Thingamajigs Performance Group and Pet the Tiger Instrument Inventors Collective celebrate the life and work of composer Pauline Oliveros and the release of the new book of text scores inspired by her “deep listening”. Several of the artists have scores published in this volume which will be performed alongside works by Oliveros. Audience participation in the “sonic meditations” is encouraged. $25 suggested donation; byob. No reservations, except for those with mobility issues. 415-586-3733. The performers: The Cardew Choir, founded in Berkeley on May Day 2001, sings at the intersection of inclusive community and experimental music, strongly influenced by Cornelius Cardew and his circle in the 1960’s and ‘70’s in England. We draw inspiration from the experimental music tradition and musicians such as Pauline Oliveros and John Cage. We recognize our music-making as enacting healthy political economy, with respect for individual contributions and high regard for the…
Read More
The Lotus Sutra is an operatic religious script, a poetic text. Epically visionary, yet utterly concrete. The poetry is only one element upon the palette of enlightened consciousness, and the Lotus Sutra teaches that enlightened consciousness is a possibility for all. It may be surprising to think of this as an ancient truth, but the Lotus Sutra is an ancient text. It is the source of many creative connections that can be made with contemporary concerns. Walker Brents III has been musing at Bird & Beckett on diverse topics in poetry, philosophy, mythology and culture on a near monthly basis for two decades. He shows no sign of flagging. These days, post-pandemic, it’s primarily a live stream, found on our facebook page and youtube channel, but you can slip into the shop to listen in person if you like. Just give us a call the afternoon of the “show” –…
Read More
The Vince Lateano Trio plays jazz in the bookshop on the third Sunday of every month. Make it a habit! You never know who’s going to drop in! Drummer Vince Lateano has been a mainstay of the San Francisco jazz scene since the mid-1960s, and also toured in those early years with Woody Herman, Vince Guaraldi and Cal Tjader. His trio with bassist Peter Bashay and pianist Ben Stolorow makes beautiful music at Bird & Beckett on the third Sunday of every month, and on the last Sunday of the month, they’re here hosting one of the City’s great jam sessions. On his third-Sunday trio dates, Vince usually invites a great established player or a new special talent to share the bandstand, and today’s engagement is no exception. Guitarist Tri (pronounced “tree”) Pham will join the fun. Tri Pham is a young and passionate jazz guitarist, composer and educator from…
Read More
Sign Up for Our Weekly Emails!
SUPPORT BIRD & BECKETT - DONATE TODAY!
Your donation to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project helps us pay for a multitude of operating expenses necessary to present, promote and preserve local music, poetry, and more.
Help us keep the arts alive and thriving!
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project was created in 2007 "to present, document and archive the creative work of significant living writers and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, for a neighborhood audience and future generations," continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
We continue to present a full slate of programming of live music and poetry readings, and produce a literary journal and poetry chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support by way of donations.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, make a check out to the “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” and drop it off or mail it to:
Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
653 Chenery Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
____________
We're immensely appreciative of Jazz in the Neighborhood for having stepped in as our temporary fiscal sponsor for a few months, while we straightened out some paperwork to get nonprofit status restored to the BBCLP. We're happy to say that's been done, and all past, present, and future donations made directly to the BBCLP are fully tax-deductible!
TAKE OUR SURVEY
To take our SURVEY, click here, and help the BBCLP get to know you better! As Duke Ellington always said, we love you madly...
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
Our events are put on under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.
The BBCLP is a [Read More ]
The Independent Musicians Alliance
Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.
https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/
Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site
