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!
David Ladensohn presents his book, Fly-Fishing with Leonardo da Vinci. Written with the literate fly-fisher in mind, Ladensohn’s book is equally interesting and entertaining to people interested in Leonardo, the flesh and blood man: a gay, God-believing but not really Church-believing, intensely science-obsessed polymath whose art was as much about his interest in optics and physicality as it is about subject matter. Combining his admiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s art with his extensive knowledge of fly-fishing, David discovered a unique connection between da Vinci’s water dynamics expertise demonstrating that he would make the ideal fly-fishing guide.
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Friday, December 13th – 6-8pm
Eric & the In Crowd
celebrate the tunes of
Harold Arlen and Irving Berlin
Eric Shifrin, piano and vocals. Simon Planting, bass. Randy Lee Odell, drums. $20 suggested donation, byob. Teens and students, $10. Children, free All year long in 2024, piano professor Eric Shifrin has been bringing the In Crowd on the second Friday of each month to celebrate a few of the great songwriters who have composed the tunes that we now consider jazz standards. He’s been working his way down the alphabet from Z to A. Tonight, the series concludes with a spotlight on the great Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen. Come hear what the fuss is all about!
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Macy Blackman, piano Bing Nathan, drums Larry Vann, drums $20 cover charge; byob. Musicians steeped in New Orleans R&B and soul, and all the New Orleans traditions from Jelly Roll Morton to Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Doctor John, the Nevilles, the Wild Tchapatoulas, Irma Thomas…the list is long and rich, and they’re happy to roll out the songs. Macy himself is a marvel of curmudgeonly charm and talent.
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These four much admired musicians have not played together before, so no one can really know what’s going to happen. But individually and in every musical situation each always can be relied on to do their absolute best with logic and other forms of magic. Songs by people in the band and an expansive horizon of possibility are in store for the listener as well as for the performers. $25 cover charge; byob. “Melford can be rhythmic, romantic, stoic, wry, and lusty but most of all daring — all in one tune. More importantly she‘s reconnected music to motion, leaving today‘s straightlaced young men in suits, who have dominated recent jazz, in her wake.” –Stuart Nicholson, The London Observer.
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Make it a habit! The Vince Lateano Trio plays the third Sunday of every month at Bird & Beckett! Vince is a 60-year veteran of the San Francisco jazz scene. Born, raised and introduced to jazz in Herb Caen’s home town of Sacramento, Vince rousted out of the Army in 1965 while the Vietnam War exploded. He immediately became a fixture on the local jazz scene, traveling with Woody Herman, playing in Cal Tjader’s final quartet in the early 1970s and holding down the fort in all the spots where jazz swings San Francisco culture. Catch the trio the last Sunday of each month as well– when they conduct one of the friendliest jam sessions in town. But on the third Sunday, it’s all about the art of the trio, often with guests dropping in, announced and otherwise… Vince Lateano, drums Peter Barshay, bass Ben Stolorow, piano BYOB and a…
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let’s build what we become when we dream rest in power, and in peace, Nikki Giovanni . come together for the holidays… .
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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…
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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…
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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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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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VirtualPoets! Kim Shuck hosts featured poets David Gorin and Caroline Goodwin and the open mic that follows. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 David Gorin is the author of To a Distant Country, selected by Jennifer Chang for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and forthcoming in 2025. His writing received the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America and has been supported by MacDowell and Millay Arts. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA, MA, and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. In recent years he has taught creative writing and literature at the Pratt Institute, Deep Springs College, Stanford Continuing Studies, Eastern Correctional Facility (via the Bard Prison Initiative), and Yale. He is the curator of the WAVEMACHINE poetry + performance series in San Francisco. Follow him on Instagram @davidgorin and via www.davidgorin.net. Caroline Goodwin’s recent books are…
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Independent reporter Denise Sullivan brings the SF Lives series to Bird & Beckett for a Sunday morning livestream. This month’s guest is poet, movement worker, and educator, Tongo Eisen-Martin. Use the video screen at the top of our website homepage to access the stream. Limited in person seating available. Call the shop at 415-586-3733. Eisen-Martin’s curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, “Someone’s Dead Already” was nominated for a California Book Award. His book “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate and he is co-founder and editor at Black Freighter Press. The SFLives Project, a series of candid conversations with San Francisco’s artists,…
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$30 cover Cash or Venmo at the door. BYOB. The tix are all called for at this point, but standing room will be available day of show at $20 per person on a first-come, first-served basis. So join the line and take your chances! Bundle up! Join us for a celebration of the Crooked Jades’ 30th Anniversary! It’s the last concert in 2024 for this amazing old-time band, and we’re delighted to host it! Like Alfred Nobel’s little blast palace in the park, the Jades are a part of Glen Park history! The Crooked Jades’ roots are in Glen Park, where Jades leader and co-founder Jeff Kazor lived for 20 years down the block above Hal & Susan’s hardware store — now sadly gone. In the early days of the band, the core trio of Jeff, Lisa Berman and Erik Pearson took their music down to the street on the…
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John Calloway, flutes Jordan Samuels, guitar Chris Trinidad, bass Emilio Davalos, percussion Plus guests Angie Doctor and Conrad Benedicto $25 cover charge; byob San Francisco native flautist, composer and arranger Dr. John Calloway has spent the last four decades in the Bay Area as one of the vanguard flute players known nationally in Latin jazz, jazz and Afro-Latino music. Since returning to the Bay Area in the mid 1980s after a stint in New York, John has performed with Omar Sosa, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Rebeca Mauleon, Marcus Shelby, Jesus Diaz, Wayne Wallace, Kularts and Quijerema, and has had a 50-year working collaborative relationship with Bay Area legend John Santos. He has performed internationally in Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Europe, Singapore and the Philippines; he has composed and arranged music for GRAMMY nominated projects and for films, including “Hemingway & Gelhorn;” and he won an EMMY award in 2019 for his composition…
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Sheila Smith McKoy and Joan Gelfand read their work; an open mic follows, hosted by Michael Koch. No charge, though your contributions help augment the small honorarium we’re able to offer the poets. byob. Sheila Smith McKoy, Ph.D. is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. Her full-length poetry collection, The Bones Beneath (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) is described as “haunting.” She is also co-author of One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets; the collection won the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology. Smith McKoy has also written, produced, directed or served as executive producer for four documentary films, including Maama Watali and Luwero: A Conversation about War, Peace and Gender (2017). She is both a Pulitzer Prize and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. Since 1994,…
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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.
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 through our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, send or drop off a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood, with BBCLP in the memo line. Our mailing address is:
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
