San Francisco Opera & Ballet Orchestra Musicians
& Friends Ride to the Rescue!

When Bay Area woes reach operatic dimensions of impending tragedy, a batch of hardy musicians who know all about operatic dimensions grab their tools of the trade and come calling!

Bird & Beckett is just the latest cause to grab their attention and garner their support.

Thursday, August 10th at 7:30pm, come out to Bird & Beckett to enjoy the musicianship of ten stalwart music makers, San Francisco Opera & Ballet musicians, both active and retired, and friends, performing in various aggregations and all together on the Bird & Beckett stage. They’re planning a program of classical pieces and more, celebrating the connections between classical, pop and folk music.

Bird & Beckett is honored to be just the latest beneficiaries of the largesse of these musicians and colleagues. The list includes concerts to benefit Ukraine, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties, the John Muir Land Trust, the National Center for Equine Facilitated Therapy and Women Veterans Giving / Women Veterans Alliance, and a concert this past November in the San Francisco Cable Car Barn for the pleasure of volunteers decorating the cable cars for the holidays. Their gift in performance continues an incalculably long tradition of musicians offering their artistry for humanitarian ends,

This evening, to benefit Bird & Beckett, you’ll hear from members of two chamber groups well loved and admired in the Bay Area: The Lowell Ensemble (Janet Popesco Archibald, oboe & English Horn; Gabriel Young, oboe; Karen Hutchinson, piano; Zachariah Spellman, tuba; Victoria Ehrlich, cello; Paul Ehrlich, viola) and The Cecilia Ensemble (Maki Ishii Sowash, violin; Michael Long, violin; Paul Ehrlich, viola; Victoria Ehrlich, cello), plus Yuzoh the Singing Dog!

Anticipating a crush of people, we’ll be sure to live stream the concert. We’ll also take reservations for seats, but ask that those reserving are only folks needing special accommodation due to, to put it delicately, age or mobility issues! Standing room and stools for the rest! Hope you understand!  Call the shop at 415-586-3733, and be sure you talk to or get a call back from Eric, the proprietor.

We also ask that you honor the musicians’ intentions and donate to support the bookstore.  Any amount is appreciated, of course!

Folks who donate $25 or more (hopefully more where possible!) will receive a discount card from Bird & Beckett that’s good on book purchases at the shop through Sunday, August 13th. Please, cash only when buying books if you want the discount. The credit/debit industry is way too eager for a cut, and we’d rather leave them out of this occasion.

Help us celebrate classical music and literary culture with this performance by musicians from the San Francisco Opera & Ballet Orchestra and their colleagues!

Can’t make this benefit? Catch it live over the internet on our YouTube channel or Facebook page (also in the video screen at the top of this website) — hit the refresh button every so often on your browser when showtime approaches as that’s the way to catch the start of the stream.

You can, and hopefully will, donate by mail, phone or internet. See the “donate” button on the navigation bar of this website! Be sure to let us know that your donation is in connection with the SF Opera & Ballet Orchestra Musicians benefit!

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Also keep in mind that we have another benefit scheduled on the heels of this one, when singer-songwriter Peter Case takes the stage solo, Saturday, August 19th, performing at the piano the songs from his new release, “Dr. Moan” — his 16th album length recording as a solo artist since his days with the Nerves, a punk rock band founded in SF in 1974 that migrated to LA, where he went on to lead the Plimsouls (“Everyday Things,” “A Million Miles Away” and more gems of the genre). Dissolving the Plimsouls in 1984, Peter embarked on three decades-plus as a solo artist crisscrossing the country and crossing the waters countless times. He once again calls San Francisco home.

We’ve known Peter’s music since hearing those Plimsouls hits on the radio and buying his first, eponymous cassette in 1986, hitting rewind on the Walkman over and over to hear “Echo Wars” one more time! Come out for Peter Case! Can’t support the bookshop often enough, can you?

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Tonight, it’s all about the wonders of
ten generous and superbly talented classical instrumentalists,
doing for us what they and their colleagues
have done for others in countless situations for centuries,
to raise funds, raise consciousness and uplift spirits!

Thanks for your support as Bird & Beckett does what it can to keep literary and musical culture alive from its home in San Francisco’s little Glen Park enclave. We’re open noon to six, Tuesdays through Sundays, for book browsing & buying, and present as many as a half dozen events — concerts, poetry readings and more — every week. Hundreds of events a year. Now in our 24th year, with no intention of stopping!

Sign up for our weekly newsletter (the sign-up form is on the sidebar of our webpage and linked from the site’s navigation bar). Call us at 415-586-3733 for information on the shop, our activities and to order a book you haven’t been able to fetch elsewhere. We’re glad to help and appreciate yours very much, as we do what we can to keep good books in circulation and to support the livelihood of prose writers, poets and gigging musicians at every opportunity!