$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated On the fourth Friday of each month, our weekly jazz in the bookshop series features The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band — a combo in direct line of descent from The Chuck Peterson Trio, which started our regular jazz programming 17 years ago. Comprising five musicians…

Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, is winner of Red Mountain Press Award for Shadow Light. Her memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press) was a finalist for the Hefner Heitz award. Other recent publications are A Casino Bestiary: Poems (Spartan Press) and Jackalope (Red Mountain). At…

San Francisco’s own Phillip Greenlief, a tenor saxophonist of immense talent and scope whose career in music takes him to major venues worldwide, returns to Bird & Beckett with a quartet anchored by Swedish drummer Kjell Nordeson, now a Bay Area resident. At the core of the group, two traveling musicians whose collaborations stretch back…

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Valerie Jay, hailing from Yorkshire, England, brings her all-star band to Bird & Beckett for two sets of originals and country classics. Rob McCloskey on bass Jeanine Richardson on percussion Joe Goldmark on steel Todd Swenson on guitar The youngest of five children, Jay picked up the guitar at…

Aileen Cassinetto hosts a reading and conversation involving two Bay Area poets, a writer from New York and a writer from Mumbai, all featured in the anthology Humanity “In HUMANITY, one is presented with humanity’s explorations, often struggles, with itself in a variety of contexts. From the anthology’s contributors—poets, environmental advocates, an ethnomusicologist, a physician,…

$20 cover charge; sliding scale available Akira Tana, drums & leader Masaru Koga, saxophone, shakuhachi, flute, percussion Grant Levin, piano Ken Okada, bass “Akira Tana’s wonderful group is truly doing something very special here and it is a fine example of how music can break down cultural barriers and expose the commonality within us all.”…

Scott Foster on electric guitar Spencer Murray on electric bass Ricky Carter on drums           Scott Foster has been a keystone of Bird & Beckett’s Friday-after-work weekly jazz party ever since it started, way back in October of 2002!           This time out, as we mark the…

Free Litquake event! Salon magazine founder David Talbot is not only a bestselling author of books like Season of the Witch and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government; he’s also a great defender of San Francisco in all its glories and disappointments.  In conversation with writer and…

3rd year! Students in the SF Conservatory of Music’s “Roots, Jazz & American Music” BMUS degree program host their peers from Bay Area colleges and high schools. No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Coltrane, Dolphy Monk. Billy Higgins, Shirley Horne, Billie Holiday, Sun Ra, Nina Simone and more geniuses of jazz are evoked in a newly published book that combines the poetry of Genny Lim and the linocuts of artist Nina Mera. This afternoon will feature a performance of the material by…