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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]
Bryan Gould, trombone and vocals. Noel Jewkes, saxophones. Brad Buethe, guitar. Richard Saunders, bass. Tony Johnson, drums. $25 cover charge; byob. Students, $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. Reserved seats are held only until showtime. Tunes from the 1930s and ’40s have inspired Swing Fever for many decades and they’ve been playing the music well over half a century. The band draws from a vast repertoire richly appointed with many, many hundreds of swing era classics and obscure masterpieces that they deliver with a rich and easy sanctified intelligence, as Billy Higgins would call it. Swing is never gone from real jazz, and the jazz of the swing era itself is immortal. Living proof. Here at Bird & Beckett! Swing Fever performs the music fresh as the day swing hit its stride as America’s dance music. “Swing Fever keeps its music alive without turning it…
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Sunnylyn Thibodeaux’s Lucky Charms: New and Selected Poems, 2000–2025 is fresh out from City Lights Books, No. 26 in its Spotlight Series, edited by Garrett Caples. Her previous books include The World Exactly (Cuneiform, 2020), Universal Fall Precautions (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), As Water Sounds (Bootstrap, 2014), and Palm to Pine (Bootstrap, 2011). She is also the author of over a dozen small books, including 20/20 Yielding (Blue Press), 88 Haiku for Lorca (Push Press), Against What Light (Ypolita), Room Service Calls (Lew Gallery Editions), and What’s Going On (Bird & Beckett) and coedits Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions. In 1999 she moved from Louisiana to the San Francisco Bay area to attend the New College of California, studying with poets including David Meltzer and Joanne Kyger. She once characterized herself as a New Orleans poet stranded in San Francisco, raising her daughter Lorca with her husband Micah Ballard. She splits her…
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Trumpet player Jeremy Kemmerer brings a jazz quintet from UC Berkeley for a set, followed by our monthly first-Sundays jam session especially open to young and young-at-heart jazz musicians still learning the ropes of this hoary tradition! Jeremy Kemmerer, trumpet. Sam Malekzadeh, tenor saxophone. Chris Cook, piano. Benny Goldenberg, bass. Lucas Quan, drums. No charge to play in the jam session, of course! There are no drinks or food to buy here, so bring your own and save some dough! We don’t generally encourage food in the shop, but we make an exception for the jam sessions, and will provide a compost can, a landfill can, and a recycle can! Adults–the students can help you to figure out what goes in which can! Please don’t make us paw through your garbage after you leave! And after that little scolding… let us emphasize that we revel in jazz, jazz musicians, jazz…
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Prepare yourself for a magnificent union of Rosy Zhang, North York Concert Orchestra principal cello, with the jazz titans comprising drummer Myron Cohen’s Billy Higgins Legacy Band. $30 cover charge / byob; students $10. Cash at the door, please! Call ahead for a reservation (415) 586-3733, but keep in mind — we’re busy selling books during the day and setting up for our shows; reservation requests left on our voicemail on the day of the show might not register with us, so just come and squeeze in! You won’t regret it. Myron brings a quintet to Bird & Beckett tonight, with the majestic talent of veteran saxophonist Richard Howell and the young fire of saxophonist Alex So and bassist Yoav Konig to feed Rosy’s hunger for inspired jazz improvisation. She’s up to the task, of this we’re certain. It will be an amazing night of music. The jazz legacy is…
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Poetryx2 + Jazzx5 = 4/2-4/5 _____ Thursday, April 2, 7:00pm David Holper + Kimi Sugioka + open mic {Free} _____ Friday, April 3, 6:00pm Hipsteria {$20} _____ Friday, April 3, 8:30pm Dan Seamans Trio {$20} _____ Saturday, April 4, 7:30pm Swing Fever {$30} _____ Sunday, April 5, 1:00pm Sunnylyn Thibodeaux {Free} _____ Sunday, April 5, 5:00pm Next Gen Jam w/ UCB Jazz Quintet {Free for players, $20 suggested for audience} _____ Sunday, April 5, 7:30pm Billy Higgins Legacy Band w/ Rosalind Zhang & Richard Howell {$30} _____ 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. Student price $10; kids free, unless otherwise noted. And, yes, the cover charge is always negotiable; if you can’t afford it, we’ll find a happy accommodation. In these times, music and…
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Jerry Martien has lived on the northern California coast for nearly half a century, supporting his writing habit as a book clerk, doorman, poet in the schools, carpenter, and Humboldt State writing instructor. He has published several collections of poetry, including chapbooks and broadsides from Jerry Reddan’s Tangram Press, as well as Shell Game (Mercury House) and The Price of a Life (self-published), both histories of money and exchange in North America and northwest California. He is also the editor of A Watershed Runs Through, a collection of essays by Freeman House, published by Empty Bowl in 2023. Jerry will read from his new collection of poems, Bodies of Water. He will also talk about his recent book, Waveshock: Ed Ricketts, The Voyage of the Grampus & Our Biopoetic Future. Through the spring and summer of 1932, four questing souls made their way north to Alaska aboard cabin…
Read MoreBrazilian Guitars, Classical Flutes, Nahuat, Poetry, Jazzx2 _____ Thursday, April 9, 7:00pm Jerry Martien, Hilton Obenzinger, Steve Vincent [Free] _____ Friday, April 10, 6:00pm Eric & The In Crowd [$20] _____ Friday, April 10, 8:30 pm Fred Randolph Quartet [$20] _____ Saturday, April 11, 7:30pm Ricardo Peixoto & Carlos Oliveira [$20] _____ Sunday, April 12, 3:00pm Jorge Argueta [Free] _____ Sunday, April 12, 5:00pm Panthéa Flutes [$25] _____ 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. Student price $10; kids free, unless otherwise noted. _____ MORE DETAILS: Thursday, April 9, 7:00pm Jerry Martien, Hilton Obenzinger, Steve Vincent A Poetry Reading Friday, April 10, 6:00pm Eric & The In Crowd Eric Shifrin, piano/vocal; Heath Proskin, bass; Mark Lee, drums Friday, April 10, 8:30 pm Fred Randolph Quartet…
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Bay Area guitarist George Cotsirilos returns to the intimate language of solo nylon-string guitar on In the Wee Hours, due for release by OA2 Records on May 15th, performed live for you at Bird & Beckett on Friday, April 24th. Illuminating beloved standards and two original compositions with patience and depth, George recorded these tunes in unedited first takes over a period of several years. Gathered on this, his seventh recording on OA2, the album unfolds with the quiet authority and refined lyricism that have defined George’s career—from his early solo and trio recordings to his celebrated quartet release, Refuge–recordings praised for their fluidity and swing. On In the Wee Hours, classics such as “Come Sunday,” “Haunted Heart” and the title ballad are rendered with a meticulous touch and subtle dynamic shadings that reveal the hidden architecture of each melody. Alternating between exquisite instruments by José Ramirez and Alberto Morales,…
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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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Although the bookshop is typically closed on Mondays, we’ll be open Monday, March 23rd for two events that hold great meaning for us. Dan Richman — a poet and musician, a philosopher of the human spirit and the natural world, a toiler in the earth, an activist in the preservation of wetlands and bird habitats, a good friend — passed away a few months ago. Family and friends will host a gathering in the bookshop at 2pm on Monday the 23rd to honor Dan and celebrate his time among us. In the first year of our shop, 1999, Dan and two fellow poets inaugurated a quarter century of readings that have become a tradition at Bird & Beckett. Over the years, on many occasions he presented plays, prose and poetry and played classical guitar here. We’ll always miss him and are richer for having known him. Please join us. At…
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Drummer Tony Johnson’s residency at Bird & Beckett continues, this month with his quartet featuring Bob Kenmotsu on tenor saxophone, Keith Saunders on piano and Eric Markowitz on bass. Tony swam ashore from Australia in 1959 and hit North Beach swingin’. The singer Bev Kelly led a date at the Coffee Gallery in October 1960 with Pony Poindexter on saxophone, Flip Nunez on piano, Johnny Allen on bass and Tony, himself, on drums, recorded by Wally Heider, produced by Orrin Keepnews and released by Riverside Records as “Bev Kelly, Live at the Coffee Gallery.” Here’s a taste. $20 suggested cover charge / byob. Students $10; kids free. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733.
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Arts for More and Bird & Beckett present an intimate evening of poetry and music with acclaimed writer Kim Addonizio, joined by accomplished jazz and blues guitarist Danny Caron and bassist Peter Barshay. No charge at the door, but it’s a benefit! Bring your checkbook and support a valuable institution while enjoying the immense talents of the artists performing for you tonight! This special WORDPlay performance is a benefit for Options Recovery Services – Addiction Recovery in the Bay Area — supporting programs and organizations that provide critical resources, healing spaces, and second chances for individuals and families navigating recovery. Addiction touches nearly every community. Recovery is not a straight line. And art has long been a companion in that journey — a place to process, to feel, to remember who you are. Your presence helps strengthen recovery networks across the Bay Area and reminds us that healing happens in…
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On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb destroyed blocks of a street in Baghdad with a history dating back to the 8th century as a site where booksellers displayed their wares and people gathered to exchange ideas. The street has since been repaired, rebuilt and reopened. The world remains besieged by violence. Memory and culture persist. At 5pm Monday the 23rd, we will honor the human spirit that prevails in the face of unspeakable horror, with poets gathering to commemorate the anniversary of a juncture in the Iraq war that presaged the current horrors bedeviling humanity.
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Ralph Alessi, trumpet. Adam Benjamin, piano. Richard Giddens, bass. Mark Ferber, drums. $20 cover charge (cash at the door, please). BYOB. Students, $10. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi–ECM recording artist and acclaimed instrumentalist, composer, and educator known for his distinctive and innovative approach to jazz improvisation and composition–returns to his Northern California roots, on tour out of NYC. He’s travelling up and down the California coast and into the central valley with a purpose-built quartet. Pianist Adam Benjamin, based in New Orleans, is on faculty at University of Nevada, Reno; while bassist Richard Giddens, born in Fresno, headed to NYC at age 17, built a career in jazz and is Director of Jazz Studies at Cal State Fresno and drummer Mark Ferber, raised in Moraga, works out of Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Ralph Alessi was born in 1963 in San Rafael and raised there in a musical family. His father, Joseph Alessi,…
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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
