BIRD & BECKETT CULTURAL LEGACY PROJECT
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project presents twenty-odd events every month in the bookshop, including at least 3 live concerts each week, plus poetry readings, talks, and all manner of cultural happenings.
See below for info on our next several events, or click here to view our extended calendar for details on events a bit further out.
Seating is limited! For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. BYOB.
The San Francisco Sextet plays the classic hard bop repertoire of the Jazz Messengers, Horace Silver, Sonny Clark, and Hank Mobley, and many more; as well as beautiful ballads and blues. Erik Jekabson, trumpet John Gove, trombone Charlie McCarthy, saxophone Benny Watson, piano Jeff Saxton, bass Greg Gotelli, drums $25 cover charge; byob Drummer Greg Gotelli fields numerous great bands in the Bay Area, from the SF Quintet with vocalist Darlene Langston to the Buena Vista Jazz Band with clarinetist Don Neeley to vocalist Lorretta Gooden’s Hammond B3 combo. Many of the great veterans of Bay Area jazz have found a berth with Greg’s groups, including Noel Jewkes, Si Perkoff, Al Obidinski, Frank Jackson, Duncan James, Glen Pearson, Chuck Bennett, Denise Perrier, Mike Greensill, Marty Eggers, John Hunt, Andrew Storar, John Clark and a host of others. A modest but dapper guy keeping good time at the kit, Greg is…
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“AVOTCJA’s poetry is music and Avotcja’s music is poetry. Both are as hot as fire and as soothing as snow flakes. And in both she brings the best of her talent in Spanish and English. Listen to her. Read her. Enjoy her. Celebrate her.” • Camincha – Peruvian Poet/Novelist; & Pacifica Poet Laureate, 2017-2021. _______________ Poet/Playwright/Essayist/Fiction Writer/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher, Avotcja is a Bay Area icon with her group Modúpue. At Bird & Beckett tonight, Modúpue will be a sextet with Avotcja joined by pianist Rudi Mwongozi, violinist Sandi Poindexter, saxophonist Francis Wong, bassist Heshima Mark Williams and drummer Myron Cohen. Modúpue was named best jazz group of the year twice, in 2005 and again in 2010, by the Bay Area Blues Hall of Fame. Avotcja herself was named a “Jazz Hero” by the Jazz Journalists Association. Her radio shows on KPFA – Bebop, Cubop & the Musical Truth (Tuesdays, 8-10pm), and KPOO…
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Mutant Audio Mini takes jazz on a deep excursion into the pedal extremities. A half-decade of electronica exploration. David Boyce/saxophone; Scott Foster/guitar. $20 suggested, byob. Students/teens – $10. Kids free. https://www.facebook.com/bird.and.beckett/videos/811531316984745
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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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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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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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Darren Johnston, trumpet/vocals Dillon Vado, vibraphone Joshua Thurston-Milgrom, bass Jaimeo Brown, drums Featuring an assortment of Johnstons’ originals as well as songs by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and Ornette Coleman $20 cover charge/byob Reservations: 415-586-3733
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The first Thursday of September, intrepid explorers from North Beach Andrew Paul Nelson (shown at left) and Scott Bird are expected to provision themselves with Riesling and make their way to Bird & Beckett to size up our wilderness outpost, est. 1999, here to declaim poetically on the journey that’s taken them this far. 1999 was the year that another Bird, not Scott, dangling his buddy Beckett in his bony claws, swept down from the dizzy atmosphere to alight on mama Frisco’s twin peaks and drifted on a reed down Islais Creek into leafy Glen Canyon, to nest in what’s now the stony Manzoni upthrust on Diamond, then just a sweet little sheet-rocked, thousand-square-foot, four-year old preschooler of a bookshop known as Jill ‘n Pat’s Glen Park Books. In short order, Eureka Valley watershed troubadour Jerry Ferraz heard rumor of the shop and wandered afoot from around the way to…
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Better yet, come on down to the shop and join the performers in our one-of-a-kind space!
Help us keep the arts alive and thriving!
Donate!
Your tax-deductible donations to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project help us pay the performers and cover a myriad of operating expenses necessary to present, promote and preserve local music, poetry, and more.
Make a one-time or recurring donation via Paypal, by clicking below, or 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
