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!
we’ll tellya more soon… both great players, and sympatico to boot. if you know, you know, and if you don’t, and you come, you’ll find out. hallelujah, eh linda?
Read MoreThe Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project and the Jazz Philanthropists Union, with financial support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, present Alternative Acts: Seeking Truth Above #F a series of six concerts beginning April Fools Day and concluding May 20th  April 18th: Dalachinsky:Cherkovski:Coolidge:Earl 3 Poets working with 1 Pianist  The “Alternative Acts” series is devoted to improvised and other avant garde musical approaches by locally based artists: — April Fool’s Day, Ouroboros Sheldon Brown and Joseph Noble, reeds; Andrew Joron, theremin; Clark Coolidge, drums — April 18th, Dalachinsky:Cherkovski:Coolidge:Earl 3 poets with 1 pianist – April 20th, Drummer Scott Amendola’s 3-in-1 with Raffi Garabedian, saxophone and Zach Ostroff, bass — April 21st, animals and giraffes Phillip Greenlief, saxphones and Bb clarinet Claudia La Rocco, text and voice Danishta Rivero, voice and electronics John Shiruba, electric and acoustic guitars and preparations — May 5th, Dark Metals David Boyce, saxophones/EFX David Ewell, bass Cairo McCockran,…
Read More“Ken Fowser’s fluid phrasing and melodic approach to improvising developed as a result of his exposure to the rich musical legacy of the Philly Sound, following in time with the rhythmic footsteps of John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Philly Joe Jones, Benny Golson and The Heath Brothers.” “Bruneau plays with clarity, exuberance and swagger…with a sophisticated harmonic palate…soul and beauty…brash or pretty…he’s a natural jazz musician.” Touring out of New York City, saxophonist Ken Fowser and trumpeter Josh Bruneau will be coming into Bird & Beckett Tuesday night fresh off a five-night run at The Black Cat in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District — fully tuned up and wailing. From here, it’s the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver, Philly, then back to NYC where they’ll take up where they left off with a weekly Friday night booking at The Django, a jazz cave in Tribeca’s Roxy Hotel. Fowser and Bruneau are…
Read MoreThe Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project and the Jazz Philanthropists Union, with financial support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, present Alternative Acts: Seeking Truth Above #F a series of six concerts beginning April Fools Day and concluding May 20th  April 20th: Scott Amendola’s 3-in-1 Raffi Garabedian, tenor sax Zach Ostroff, bass Scott Amendola, drums  The “Alternative Acts” series is devoted to improvised and other avant garde musical approaches by locally based artists: — April Fool’s Day, Ouroboros Sheldon Brown and Joseph Noble, reeds; Andrew Joron, theremin; Clark Coolidge, drums — April 18th, Dalachinsky:Cherkovski:Coolidge:Earl 3 poets with 1 pianist – April 20th, Drummer Scott Amendola’s 3-in-1 with Raffi Garabedian, saxophone and Zach Ostroff, bass — April 21st, animals and giraffes Phillip Greenlief, saxphones and Bb clarinet Claudia La Rocco, text and voice Danishta Rivero, voice and electronics John Shiruba, electric and acoustic guitars and preparations — May 5th, Dark Metals David Boyce,…
Read MoreDon Alberts, an extraordinary bop-influenced jazz pianist and a prolific writer in many veins – whether music, poetry, fiction, or cultural history, leads a dynamic trio that loves to swing and is ready to go in any direction afforded by the modern jazz idiom! Drummer Ron Marabuto and bassist Larry Epstein are fully up to Don’s plans for an evening of jazz and be-bop-Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie and a slew of Don’s originals.
Read MoreNew music for jazz sextet by the Lisa Mezzacappa Six, inspired by Italo Calvino’s stories on the history of the universe – developed in a series of salon performances at Bird & Beckett beginning tonight and concluding Saturday, November 3rd. Aaron Bennett, tenor saxJohn Finkbeiner, guitarMark Clifford, vibesTim Perkis, electronicsLisa Mezzacappa, bassJordan Glenn, drumsBookstore Residency & Work-in-Progress Salons4 Thursdays at 7:30pm April 19/May 24/July 5/Sept 13 $10 Suggested Donation Concert FinaleSaturday, Nov 3 at 7:30pm $20 cover chargeBay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa visits with her sextet for a five-concert residency beginning April 19th and ending November 3rd, to develop a new suite of music inspired by Italo Calvino’s extraordinary “Cosmicomics” stories. Over a series of Thursday evening salons, Lisa and her colleagues will explore new music drawn from Calvino’s supremely imaginative play on incidents in the history of the universe and the invisible forces at work in the…
Read MoreRandy Newman anyone? The Kinks? Whatever the Hillbilllies want to do!! C’mon out!
Read MoreDineh man, editor, poet. Chickasaw woman, two-spirit, language warrior. Cherokee laureate. Who wouldn’t want to come to Bird & Beckett for that!? (Sorry, but airline problems have interfered with Jenny Davis’s travel plans, and she won’t be able to make the reading on Sunday! So Kim has recruited EK Keith to pinch hit! No tragedy, that! EK is a local hero, a wonderful poet and a deep soul! A teacher by day, a bohemian by nature, we all love EK!) The poems in Bojan Louis’s poetry collection, Currents, explore American identity and the powers of myth, faith, doubt, and the environment, and the music of these poems resonate with strains of the English, Spanish, and Diné languages. Louis, who has worked as a construction worker and electrician, moves fluently between the literal and symbolic dimensions of work, as he writes in the poem “Electricity”: “Any laborer gathered for a tear-out /…
Read MoreNoel Jewkes, saxophone Grant Levin, piano Aaron Cohn, bass Mark Lee, drums Bird & Beckett’s Saturday night “jazz club” series kicked off in July of 2014 with a quartet led by the phenomenal young pianist Grant Levin and featuring veteran saxophonist Noel Jewkes. After nearly four years of consecutive Saturdays, we present these wonderful musicians once again this Saturday night, in two sets highlighted by a generous number of originals and arrangements by Mr. Jewkes! Noel Jewkes has set the standard among San Francisco jazz saxophone players for decades, since moving here from Utah where he grew up in a musical family — playing Salt Lake City clubs and area resorts and traveling widely through the region with his uncle’s big band. Starting out here as a jazz player in the early 1960s, he didn’t shy away from the late 1960s rock and roll scene – playing in the all-girls-but-one…
Read MoreDenise Perrier is celebrated from Havana to St. Petersburg and here at home for her elegant contralto, for her phrasing and swing, for her unparalleled interpretation of tunes drawn from the jazz canon and the Great American Songbook — the timeless popular music that poured out of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and the little offices and garrets of songwriters across the land from the teens and ’20s through the 1950s. Her place among the top rank of San Francisco’s jazz vocalists is unquestioned. Fortunately for us, her affection for the Bird & Beckett stage and audience brings her out to Glen Park, to our intimate room with 35 seats and space for a dozen more avid standing room guests… Tonight, pianist Grant Levin, bassist Ruth Davies and drummer Daria ‘Shani’ Johnson provide the rhythm section, and vocalist Larry Smith will sing a few tunes as well. Kim Nally & Jerry…
Read MoreRitmojito features vocalist Sandra Aran, with Richard Nelson Hall on piano, Dean Muench on bass and Dan Foltz, drums. Superbly crafted songs with deep latin jazz grooves, salsa to ska to samba. This is a date you won’t want to miss!
Read MoreLast chance this school year to catch the RJAM Jam! Students from local colleges and high schools hosted by the freshman class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s brand new “Roots, Jazz & American Music” undergraduate degree program! They’ll be dispersing for the summer right after finals in May, but will come back in the fall — along with a brand new crop of brilliant young student musicians honing their skills for a career in jazz!
Read MoreTwo sets of high octane honky tonk from a supergroup that’s happy to call Bird & Beckett home every second Sunday. Joe Goldmark, pedal steel guitar Mitch Polzak, lead guitar and vocals Hank Maninger, bass guitar and vocals Kenny Owen, drums
Read MoreThe Chet Baker Project Revisited featuring Al Molina on trumpet & Dima on vocals Larry Chinn, piano; Ron Belcher, bass; Jim Zimmerman, drums Covering music associated with Chet Baker from his beginnings in the early 1950s to his death in 1988, this ensemble showcases through music and lyric an etching of the feeling and the aura of the times Post WWII – Korean War when romance and melancholia filled the air. Trumpeter Al Molina and Dima blend their two voices presenting a répertoire and style paying tribute to Chet Baker and his musical works. This quintet date is supported by Jazz in the Neighborhood’s Guaranteed Fair Wage Fund. $10-20 donation at the door requested; no tip jar!
Read MoreSign Up for Our Weekly Emails!
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.
TAKE OUR SURVEY
To take our SURVEY, click here, and help the BBCLP get to know you better! As Duke Ellington always said, we love you madly...
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