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!
Matt Renzi, reeds. Dahveed Behroozi, piano. Josh Thurston-Milgrom, bass. Tim Bulkley, drums. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Adventurous compositions delivered with consummate skill and commitment. Matt Renzi runs quartets in San Francisco, New York City and Rome. His mastery of the saxophone is a pleasure to experience, and his compatriots in the quartet are fully equal to the challenge of playing his music, adding dimensions that take the listener deep into Matt’s world.
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Ben Stolorow, piano. Peter Barshay, bass. Vince Lateano, drums. and special guest Ryan Ancheta on trumpet. $20 suggested cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. The Vince Lateano Trio plays on the third Sunday of each month at Bird & Beckett, putting a fresh twist on jazz standards drawn from a deep well of tradition. Always a pleasure.
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We have so many plans, so many commitments and so little to rely on save hard work, luck and fate! Make your mark on the culture by staking us to our plans, schemes, habits and dreams! Jazz and poetry don’t pay well in this alternative reality we call capitalism! It’s the hardscrabble commitment of the average citizen and the largesse of a few that allow organizations like ours to pay the artists AND keep the lights on. Thank you those who have our back! We do it for you and with you, and for and with the artists. If a tax deduction is a high priority for you, you’ll want to wait awhile before cutting us a check. We understand that, and in a few months we’ll have our nonprofit status back, we’re quite sure. Meanwhile, this drive is a pitch for non-deductible donations! The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy…
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From the mouths of babes… and their teachers… we have come to know that Kamala, yes, that Kamala, attended Berkwood Hedge school in Berkeley as a kindergartner. Berkwood Hedge, Berkeley itself, Oakland, the East Bay at large, and all our progressive hearts were represented at the DNC on the 22nd. A Berkwood Hedge 6th grader led the recitation of the pledge of allegiance Thursday the 22nd, nomination night, at the convention. Luna, the student leading the pledge, knows of Mulla Nasrudin, Coyote, gods and goddesses, dervishes, Flintlock the cat and a host of others, stories and insight accrued to her since her kindergarten years. Her imagination has been broadened by these tales. She has drawn circle designs side by side with a gifted teacher, our own resident visionary mystic philosopher-poet, WBIII. The humble work of a storyteller goes on, from sea to shining sea. We are inheritors of Whitman’s democratic…
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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…
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Bird & Beckett’s events open to the public have 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 & more live in the shop and 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…
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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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Michele Korb, guitar and vocals. Barbara Raboy, reeds. Susanne DiVincenzo, bass. $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Take 3 plays jazz standards and tunes from the Great American Songbook. Barb and Susanne play with Melba’s Kitchen, the all-women Big Band in the East Bay that plays the music of the black women geniuses, Mary Lou Williams and Melba Liston. Michele just returned from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland where she played with an experimental theater group. The trio is well known from a long, ongoing run of monthly first Fridays bookings at Chez Mansour in Albany and before that at Berkeley’s Cafe Leila.
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Eric Shifrin, piano & vocals. Ari Munkres, bass. Mark Lee, drums. $20 suggested donation, adults. BYOB. Teens and students, $10. Kids free. Duke Ellington added innumerable lovely tunes to the American Songbook, often in collaboration, credited and sometimes not, with Billy Strayhorn. Treasures untold. Eric and his trio will pull some up for your eager ears this evening.
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The evening ragas Bruce Hamm and Ferhan Qureshi will perform in duo at Bird & Beckett are structured on melodic lines performed over rhythmic cycles, or tala, that employ principles set forth in the 2nd-3rd century CE Sanskrit treatise on the aesthetics, poetics, music and dance of Indian theatre known as the Bharata Natyashastra as refined in the Dattilam (probably 3rd–4th century CE). The tradition which Messrs. Hamm and Qureshi have studied developed in North India after Hindustani classical music diverged from the Carnatic classical music tradition of South India in the 12th century CE. Bruce Hamm is a disciple of the revered maestro Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He has pursued a serious and continuous study of classical instrumental and vocal music over nearly 4 decades. Bruce accompanied his Guru Ali Akbar Khan onstage on multiple occasions and has performed numerous solo concerts throughout the US and India. Ferhan Qureshi…
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Fall is when nature breaks up with you – the perfect time to hear songs of heartache. So, now’s the time to flag 9/11 for your emergency Johnny Lonely show! Johnny Lonely and Joshua Raoul Brody’s harmonized cries for help bring first responders Ed McClary and David Jess, on drums and bass, respectively, rushing in — though never rushing the beat! This will be the last full Johnny Lonely band gig of 2024. After this (well, truth be told, leading up to this and pretty much ever after), they lick their wounds, wonder what happened, and why, and grow emboldened to do it yet again. But another day for that! Thank goodness! Tonight, expect jazzy original songs of humorous heartbreak and pop covers of musical mopery. Recovery time varies. $20 cover charge; byob (highly recommended, under the circumstances). Reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733.
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Jeff DeMark gleaned sage insights from Zoe Nordstrom nearly every time they took the time to talk about her life, his life, and his contemporaneous San Francisco scuffle through 17 temp jobs in 22 months in the late 1980s, not to mention the ill-fated love affair that had brought him out from Wisconsin to San Francisco. Famous to us and to community activists near and far as one of the Gum Tree Girls, who headed off plans for a freeway that would have wended its way up the canyon and over Twin Peaks for the convenience of hustling commuters, Zoe Nordstrom rented Jeff a space in her Glen Park house for a three-year stretch that included the period covered in his solo show. Her take on things colored his whole philosophy on how to proceed in a world full of hustling commuters. In “Went to Lunch, Never Returned,” with Laura…
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Lynne Maes, vocals and guitar Hank Maninger, vocals and lead guitar Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Tim Wagar, bass Leor Beary, drums $20 cover charge/byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Nashville Honeymoon honors traditional country music and pushes its boundaries. Lynne and Hank both write songs for the band that sound like instant classics. Hank’s driving lead guitar, perfectly balanced by Lynne’s true-blue vocals, are – as the old song goes – the right combination. Add pedal steel whiz Joe Goldmark, and this band takes on an extra dimension that’s guaranteed to please. With tight vocal harmonies and a rhythm section that can play a country shuffle every bit as well as a country rock anthem, Nashville Honeymoon delivers a dynamic, charming and heartfelt show every time they hit the stage.
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Ben Ball, saxophone Sam Cady, piano Charles Thomas, bass Michael Spencer, drums $20 cover charge; byob Reservations: 415-586-3733 Charles Thomas has been laying down his soulful jazz and R&B for decades, even if he did have to drive a Muni bus for years to keep the rent paid — not the first professional musician with a day job! Still, those party bands like Pride & Joy can augment a working man’s pay quite nicely, and that always made it a treat when he could find time in his schedule with them to do some bebop quartet work on the Bird & Beckett stage. It’ll be a good time when Charles brings a quartet tonight!
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Macy Blackman, piano and vocals Bing Nathan, bass $20 suggested donation; byob Teens and music students, $5-10 suggested Kids free Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Macy Blackman is a piano professor of the first water, drawing from a deep well of New Orleans R&B, blues & boogie woogie, with a half dozen cds to his credit and decades of experience. Nothin’ but good times. Guaranteed!
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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." We've been doing that very thing for more than a decade and a half, continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above, drop off a check at the bookshop, or drop one in the mail 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.
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
