653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
1-415-586-3733
eric@birdbeckett.com
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!
No joke: It’s afternoon in America! Wake up! The joke, a bad one, is Donald Trump. Seriously: At noon today, Wednesday, April 2nd, and for 26 days in a row at noon, we’re going to turn on the tv at Bird & Beckett and play an hour’s worth of Senator Cory Booker’s speech that began Monday, March 31st and ended 25 hours later on April 1st. _________________ The usual weekly party at Bird & Beckett kicks off at 7pm Wednesday, April 2nd, when SFPL Western Addition branch librarian Moazzam Sheikh, a skilled writer of novellas and short stories, and Moazzam’s good friend, the acclaimed, perspicacious and quirky novelist Elizabeth McKenzie, host their mutual good friend from Chicago, the writer and editor Syed Afzal Haider, who will read from his recent volume of short stories (The Dying Sun, Weavers Press, 2024). Donations welcome, byob. _________________ Thursday at 7pm our…
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Here at Bird & Beckett Books, we’ve always relied on the kindness of neighbors and strangers to make it all work; and we’ve always found that strangers don’t stay strangers long! Your tax-deductible donations to our 501(c)3 nonprofit, the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, FEIN 261906810, are the secret sauce. Book sales and cover charges at the shows are crucial, but only go so far to fill the cornucopia of culture that you’ll find here at Bird & Beckett! You can donate through our website using PayPal. Or if you prefer, you can drop off or mail us a check made out to the “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” — write “tax-deductible donation” in the memo line. Cash is fine if you prefer. You can also donate on a recurring, monthly basis through PayPal — which is quite a wonderful way to support us. Bright moments ahead, thanks…
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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…
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Plenty to see and hear at Bird & Beckett this weekend. Open noon to six for browsing the books, and then, there’s music… Friday the 28th, there’s a 6-8pm show (The Tony Johnson Quartet returns! – $20 cover charge), then an 8:30-10pm show (The Aaron Germain Quartet – $20 cover charge). Saturday at 7:30, we present the Unnamable Quartet ($25) — Marc Caparone, Dan Barrett, Jeff Hamilton and Benny Amón — playing the trad jazz that came out of New Orleans before the swing era. Sunday at 5 ($20 donation) is our monthly jam session. And Sunday at 8pm, it’s the Ryan Ancheta Quartet ($20), featuring bassist Marcus Shelby. You can reserve seats for our shows. Just call the shop at 415-586-3733 during store hours. Pay at the door when you arrive. Reservations are held only until the show starts. Cash is king when attending the shows. Venmo also accepted,…
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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.
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You never know who might drop in. Maybe you! The Vince Lateano Trio will make you feel right at home! BYOB and a twenty for the trio.
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Marc Caparone, cornet and trumpet. Dan Barrett, trombone and cornet. Jeff Hamilton, piano. Mikiya Matsuda, bass. $25 cover charge for adults / byob. Teens and students, $10. Kids free. The sweetest, most joyful, most satisfying, most rambunctious music you’ll ever hear is the creole jazz that flowered in New Orleans and floated up and down the Mississippi River in the first decades of the 1900s, when skilled and sophisticated musicians playing for polite society joined with rough and ready talents from the crescent city’s back of town to thrill a richly diverse populace gathering in the public squares, street parades, brothels, barrooms and riverboats of a thriving era. The Unnamable Quartet brings together four musicians steeped in the traditions, with dozens if not a hundred tunes at their fingertips, to make you realize the music has never gone away or lost its vast charm. If you like what you hear,…
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Jesse Levit, saxophone. Matt Clark, piano. Aaron Germain, bass. Isaac Schwartz, drums. $20 cover charge per adult / byob. Student rate $10-15 sliding scale. cash or venmo; no credit cards. Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Aaron Germain, a unique voice on bass with a flexibility beyond compare, is well into his third decade working widely and constantly as hired gun, core band member and bandleader. This has led him through all sorts of adventures, as he’s traveled the world and learned from musical masters. Growing up in Massachusetts, he cut his teeth playing upright and electric bass in bands playing jazz, blues, funk, reggae, Senegalese mbalax and more, driving to New York, to Boston and all over New England. From the beginning he learned to be picky about quality, but not genre. Moving to San Francisco Bay Area in 2000, his adventures expanded. He entered the realms of Salsa…
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Bob Kenmotsu, saxophone. Keith Saunders, piano. Eric Markowitz, bass. Tony Johnson, drums. $20 suggested donation per adult / byob. Teens and students, $10. Kids free. Tony Johnson has been a cornerstone of the San Francisco jazz scene since he hit town in 1959. Tony recorded on Riverside Records with singer Bev Kelly and saxophonist Pony Poindexter (“Bev Kelly in Person, Live at the Coffee Gallery,” 1960, produced by Orrin Keepnews); in 1964 was musical director of the Vagabonds at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, playing the Ed Sullivan Show with the band in 1964 on the same bill with Sammy Davis, Jr.; toured nationally with Earl “Fatha” Hines in 1971; played with Bobby Short at the Hungry Eye in North Beach and with Peggy Lee in 1973 at the Fairmont Hotel’s Venetian Room; toured and recorded with the Claude Williamson Trio; was in Mike Vax’s Great American Jazz Band…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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!
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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
