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653 Chenery Street in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
Open to walk-in trade and browsing Tuesday to Sunday noon to six
phone: 1-415-586-3733 email: [email protected]
Charles McNeal, alto sax. Joe Warner, piano. Ron Belcher, bass. Jemal Ramirez, drums. $20 cover charge; byob. $10 for students. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Saxophonist Charles McNeal has been a featured performer at the Monterey, San Jose, San Francisco and Telluride jazz festivals as well as the Playboy Jazz Festival (now known as the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival), and the Umbria Jazz Festival and Porretta Soul Festival in Italy. He’s performed, recorded and/or toured with: Lyle Lovett, The Headhunters w/Mike Clark and Bill Summers, Jimmy Scott, Charlie Mussellwhite, Keb Mo, John Faddis, Wynton Marsalis, James Carter, Steve Turre, McCoy Tyner, Ray Obiedo, Dave Garabaldi, Steve Turre, James Carter, Brenda Boykin, Claire Dee, Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers, Barbara Morrison, Jackie Ryan, Take 6, Kirk Whalum, Nneenna Freelon, Barbara Dennerlein, Junior Mance, Bruce Forman, Mark Elf, Roberta Flack, The Temptations, Norman Conners, Jean Carne,…
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Jazzx5 + the Year of the Fire Horse! _____ Thursday, February 26, 7:30pm {$20} Joe Warner Quartet, feat. Charles McNeal _____ Friday, February 27, 6:00pm {$20} 230 Jones Street Band _____ Friday, February 27, 8:30pm {$20} Stephan Crump _____ Saturday, February 28, 7:30pm {$25} Idris Ackamoor: Artistic Being _____ Sunday, March 1, 1:00pm {$} CMC Lunar New Year showcase _____ Sunday, March 1, 5:00pm {$} Next Gen Jam w/ Bishop O’Dowd Jazz Combo _____ Reserve a seat by calling the bookshop at (415) 586-3733. We’ll hold your reservation until the music starts. No advance ticket sales; plan to pay with cash at the door, and byob. _____ MORE DETAILS: Thursday, February 26, 7:30pm Joe Warner Quartet, feat. Charles McNeal Joe Warner, piano; Charles McNeal, alto sax; Ron Belcher, bass; Jemal Ramirez, drums Friday, February 27, 6:00pm 230 Jones Street Band Charlie McCarthy, saxophone; Sam Cady, piano; Chuck Bennett, bass;…
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Charlie McCarthy, saxophone. Sam Cady, piano. Chuck Bennett, bass. Tony Johnson, drums. $20 suggested cover charge / byob. Students $5-$10 sliding scale. Kids free. No reservations needed. Stay for a tune, stay for two hours & two sets. Jazz is here for you at Bird & Beckett, and this band represents the legacy that the “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” aims to sustain and extend for today’s ears and tomorrow’s jazz minds. Jazz in the bookshop was started in earnest in 2002, when tenor player Chuck Peterson (at left in the accompanying photo, with Tony at the drum kit, Glen Deardorff on guitar and Dorothy Lefkovitz, vocalist) proposed that if we’d give him a weekly berth, he’d bring us experienced talent and make sure they were adequately paid as long as we did what we could to help on that score. We taught our patrons that fair compensation for…
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$20 cover charge / byob. Students, $10. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733 With this performance at Bird & Beckett, Stephan Crump will be on the verge of his return to NYC after two weeks of solo performances and masterclasses. Stephan’s solo performances are engaging and intimate, celebrating his unique musicality; his solo work is crystallized on the album Rocket Love, of which Will Layman in Popmatters has said, “I am tempted to call Rocket Love my favorite solo bass recording of all time. At a minimum, it is the most varied and fun.” Memphis-bred, Grammy-nominated, Echo Award-winning bassist/composer Stephan Crump is an active bandleader with fifteen critically-acclaimed album releases and numerous film scoring contributions. Stephan’s solo performance, which explores his unique musical language through an expansive range of sonorities on the acoustic bass, is a culmination of decades of work as a bassist, composer, and improviser. From his home studio in Brooklyn,…
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Idris Ackamoor, alto saxophone. Bobby Cobb, saxophone. Skyler Stover, bass. Donald Robinson, drums. $25 cover charge; byob. Students $10; Kids free. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-202-4870. Idris Ackamoor is a giant in the music of jazz and has been since the 1970s. From Oberlin College (where Cecil Taylor instilled the magnificence of jazz in his students) to Paris (where Donald Robinson and Idris first collaborated) and Africa (where The Pyramids fully coalesced) to San Francisco (where the Pyramids gave way to Cultural Odyssey, a project of Idris and Rhodessa Jones) to today, with the Pyramids continuing to tour internationally, Cultural Odyssey persisting and Idris’s many projects exploding in the popular consciousness, Idris only grows in stature and depth. Tonight’s quartet will set you on your ear. Don’t miss out!
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Shirley Wong hosts a panoply of faculty, student and allied musical talents in a tribute to her sister Betty and to the wonders of the Community Music Center, a San Francisco tradition for well over one hundred years. The Community Music Center has introduced generation upon generations of eager students to the wonders of music performance, and is going strong. Shirley and her sister Betty, who we lost just a few months ago, have been a part of it for decades, and this annual program celebrating the lunar new year has been a keystone in Bird & Beckett’s programming for several decades. Please come out and donate to help us reward the talent involved.
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Bay Area student musicians welcome–travelers, too! Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland is sending their jazz ensemble to play a set, andthen host the session. Free!
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Betty Ann Wong has passed. Our Glen Park neighbor, she lived for decades in a humble but iconic house at the foot of O’Shaughnessy, at its intersection with Elk, above a dragon-emblazed garage door. Through a long career as a musician and composer, Betty personified humanity’s devotion to its music, in its many colors and rhythmic subtleties, for the bond it affords the world’s peace-loving people in their varied hues and accents. Betty’s siblings were a formidable bunch–she and her surviving twin Shirley were closely associated in music all their lives, from early classical music lessons to studies, degrees and faculty positions at Mills College, UC San Diego and San Francisco State, joining the faculty of the San Francisco Community Music Center in 1972, and co-founding the Flowing Stream Ensemble in 1973 and the Phoenix Spring Ensemble in 1977 to dive into Chinese and pan-Asian musical traditions. Their brother Zeppelin,…
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Saúl Sierra, bass Marco Díaz, trumpet & piano Charlie Gurke, saxophones Emilio Davalos, percussion $20 cover charge; byob. Students, $10 Cash at the door, please. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733 Saúl Sierra was born and raised in Mexico City, where he started playing professionally in 1990. In 1995, he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 1999 with a B.Mus. in Performance. He received the US Scholarship tour award and the Outstanding Performer award at Berklee. As a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area since the fall of 1999, Saúl has performed, toured or recorded with Poncho Sanchez, Paquito D’ Rivera, Zakir Hussain, Arturo Sandoval, Jerry Gonzales, Jerry Medina, Walfredo de los Reyes, Giovanni Hidalgo, Peter Erskine, Donny McCaslin, Charlie Musselwhite, Pete Escovedo, Ernesto Oviedo, Steve Turre, Ray Vega, Hector Tricoche, Paquito Guzman, Antonio Sanchez, Arturo O’Farrill, Larry Harlow, Bobi Céspedes, Jimmy Bosh,…
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Here’s a little backstory, to get us to where we now stand… in re: the Fridays, anyway… Read on! And thanks for being part of the Bird & Beckett story in the present day. /s/Eric Whittington, proprietor, since 1999 Once upon a time, in the late spring of 1999, Bird & Beckett opened its doors down on Diamond Street where Manzoni now serves exquisite Northern Italian cuisine to the ravenous epicures who’ve found their way to Glen Park. We took on the nicely appointed 1,000 square foot space from the four-year-old Glen Park Books, and paid our rent to Manhal Jweinat, still to this day the crepemaster behind the counter of his kitty-corner coffee house, Higher Grounds, which he opens in the early morning before jamming across the street to handle his love child, Manzoni through the dinner hours. Amazing fella, and still a good friend, that Manhal! Within…
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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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Jazzx4 + 1 Lit Talk _____ Tuesday, February 17, 7:30pm {$20} Jerome Sabbagh Trio _____ Thursday, February 19, 7:30pm, a live stream {Free} Walker Talks, on Ella Young _____ Friday, February 20, 6:00pm {$20} Scott Foster/David Phillips/Andrew Higgins/David Rokeach _____ Saturday, February 21, 7:30pm {$20} Levy / Campilongo Guitar Duo _____ Sunday, February 22, 5:00pm {$20} Jam session _____ Reserve a seat by calling the bookshop at (415) 586-3733. We’ll hold your reservation until the music starts. No advance ticket sales; plan to pay with cash at the door, and byob. _____ MORE DETAILS: Tuesday, February 17, 7:30pm – $20 cover/byob Jerome Sabbagh Trio Jerome Sabbagh, tenor sax; Essiet Okon Essiet, bass; Sylvia Cuenca, drums… Thursday, February 19, 7:30pm – donations welcome Walker Talks, a monthly live stream from the bowels of the darkened bookshop. This month, Ella Young—a California presence. An Irish revolutionary, visionary mystic, immigrant, scholar, poet and…
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Bring your axe! No charge to play, but if you can afford bring a twenty for the session hosts, the Vince Lateano Trio, or any amount you can manage. BYOB. Fuel the jazz fire!
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Jazz players assemble for the jam session run by drummer Vince Lateano on the last Sunday of each month. Vince has been a mainstay of the jazz scene in San Francisco for 60 years and has run a succession of sessions for decades at venues including Pier 23, the Dogpatch Saloon, the Seven Mile House and Sweeties Art Bar. All are welcome. No charge to play, but a donation to help us pay the trio is always appreciated.
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Tonight, drummer Sylvia Cuenca & bassist Essiet Essiet bring us their NYC-based colleague Jerome Sabbagh for two sets of trio music. Expect them to propel Jerome to fresh heights of jazz creativity! BYOB and a twenty for the trio. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Saxophonist and composer Jerome Sabbagh was born in Paris in 1973 and has been living in Brooklyn since 1995. A prolific forward-thinking composer, as well as a musician with a deep connection to the well of the jazz tradition, he has recorded nine albums as a leader. Much more on Jerome further down this page. But first a note on his hosts. Essiet Okon Essiet’s career has included a berth in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the time leading up to the great drummer’s death in 1990, documented in two albums recorded and released in that year–Chippin’ In and One…
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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.
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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
