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!
Chinese American revolutionary feminist poet Nellie Wong, a Glen Park resident, grew up in Oakland’s Chinatown and came of age working in her parents’ restaurant there. Tracked into a working class path and following business classes at Oakland High School, she went to work as a secretary at Bethlehem Steel. In her 30s, in the late 1960s, Nellie enrolled at San Francisco State University, taking creative writing, ethnic studies and feminist studies classes and joining the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women, lifelong associations that continue to this day. Her development as a poet and her dedication to the struggle for radical social change took on a focused momentum in those years at San Francisco State which has continued for six decades. In her mid-80s, in tribute to her engagement in poetry and political struggle, students at Oakland High successfully petitioned for a building at the school to be named…
Read MoreNot a chance that we’ll cease and desist!… Tuesday to Sunday, we sell books noon to six each day… And along the way… Friday, April 5th, the weekend’s jazz begins! At 6pm, Zoot! a Sam Cady joint. With Charlie McCarthy, Ollie Dudek and Tony Johnson. Just great jazz, the monster under the bed! Zoot alors! And at 8:30pm, the Sheldon Alexander Quartet, with yet another great guitarist from NYC, Ilya Lushtak, plus trumpeter extraordinaire Erik Jekabson and the great Adam Shulman on organ! Sheldon is a young drummer with an incandescent future ahead of him and a great presence in the present that is Bay Area Jazz! Saturday, April 6th, 7:30pm, the fabulous Harvey Wainapel, from whom we’ve heard far too little since the events of early 2020, brings a fabulous quartet — reasserting his position as one of the very key reed players in these parts. He has the…
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Jam session on the last Sunday of each month from 5 to 7pm! All jazz players welcome. Audience, please donate to help us pay the Vince Lateano Trio to host the jam — Ben Stolorow, piano; Peter Barshay bass, Vince Lateano, drums.
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Noah Frank, trumpet Stephanie Woodford, piano Curtis Aikens, bass Martin Diller, drums $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. The Noah Frank Quartet will present a mixture of original tunes, pop covers, and jazz standards. Noah has performed at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, DC Jazz Festival, PDX Jazz Festival, Rockefeller Center, and many more.
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“Tal is an amazing guitarist and fabulous human making stunning music.” –Nora Stanley $15 cover charge, byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Tal Yahalom is an award-winning guitarist, composer and bandleader based in Brooklyn, New York since 2014. Drawing from a wide range of influences – spanning jazz and impressionistic classical music to Brazilian repertoire and South-American guitar traditions – Tal aims to create engaging storytelling, adventurous interplay and a deep sense of groove while expanding on the traditional roles and textural capabilities of the guitar. As a leader, he performs regularly with diverse solo programs, a chamber-jazz quintet (set to release its debut album in 2024), a collective post-rock trio KADAWA, and various trios which have featured Caroline Davis, Dan Weiss, Eivind Opsvik and Rogerio Boccato. Following three solo guitar EPs of original and improvised music, Tal released ‘Solo Standards’ in June 2023 – an ambitious and creative take on classic jazz…
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Robert Kennedy, organ Scott Foster, guitar Cody Rhodes, drums $20 cover charge; byob. Reservations, call 415-586-3733. Robert Kennedy’s 2015 debut Hammond organ combo release Big Shoes spent nine weeks on the CMJ charts, peaking at #11, and his 2018 album Closer to Home, also with the organ trio, peaked at #5 on NACC’s jazz chart, #1 on RMR’s jazz chart, and #32 on JazzWeek’s Top 50. Arriving in the Bay Area in 1988 from the American South, Robert played piano in the Stanford University Jazz Band and studied jazz piano with the great jazz pianist, band director and educator Bill Bell. Robert was a founding member of the groups Hip Pocket Jazz Quintet and Double Funk Crunch, performed as pianist with the SFJAZZ Monday Night Band, and held the accordion chair in Mission Hot Club. He has had the pleasure of playing venues such as Yoshi’s, the Boom Boom Room, San…
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Janet Popesco Archibald, oboe & English horn Paul Ehrlich, viola Victoria Ehrlich, cello Zachariah Spellman, tuba Karen Hutchinson, piano Comprising musicians from the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras, the Lowell Ensemble will perform a fun & festive mix of Classical, Folk & Pop music, featuring Nadia Boulanger’s Trois Pieces and Schumann’s Pieces in Canonic Style for oboe, cello & piano, Astor Piazzolla’s Grand Tango for cello & piano, Jacobson’s Preludes for Tuba & piano, & everything from Bach to Bacharach. $20 cover charge; byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733
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Anne Breedlove Part-Time Nomads: Traveling the World by Bicycle Diane LeBow Dancing on the Wine-Dark Sea: Memoir of a Trailblazing Woman’s Travels, Adventures and Romance MJ Pramik Travels on the Edge: One Woman’s Journeys on a Runaway Planet Free. Seat reservations accepted by phone at 415-586-3733. Reservations honored until the event begins at 7pm. Three writers with a hunger for knowledge and experience of the wider world, their individual reasons and preoccupations and their unique insights converge at Bird & Beckett to read from their work and to entertain your own thoughts, insights and questions. ____________________ Anne Breedlove’s Part Time Nomads is part memoir, part travelogue and one hundred percent ode to taking on crazy challenges no matter your age or life situation. The book focuses on Anne and her husband’s evolution from weekend cyclists to fully loaded, self-contained international bicycle travelers. Averaging eight…
Read MoreOn the fourth Monday of each month, Kim Shuck hosts an open mic on Zoom. Here’s how to find it: Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 When Monday Mar 25, 2024 ⋅ 7pm – 8:30pm (Pacific Time – Los Angeles) Location https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 View map
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Never before has the Bird & Beckett stage proffered such wit and wisdom, pathos and bathos… Come to be entertained for a rewarding hour by six experienced & truth-telling women of great pluck, good humor & infinite grace. Free to all, reservations welcome (call the shop). No heckling allowed. Laughter and tears inevitable.
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Tom Griesser, saxophone Kevin Gerzevitz, organ Scott Foster, guitar Dan Foltz, drums $20 cover, byob Reservations, call 415-586-3733 Reservations are honored ’til showtime. “For the sound of today’s organ combo, look no further than B3B4.” -Pete Fallico, KCSM Radio Host and CEO of Jazz Organ Fellowship Four of our favorite players on the local scene have been thrilling audiences for years with their funky little combo called B3B4, offering a rich dive into the diverse and divine jazz organ repertoire built up in the 1950s & 1960s by the greats of the Hammond B3, including Jimmy Smith, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and countless others, and mixing in tunes that seem tailor-made for the purpose — including some of their own. Nothing but fun tonight!
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Dmitri returns! This time slinking & soaring through the Mancini catalogue! Reserve your seat now! (415) 586-3733 $20 cover charge; byob Matt Clark piano Ruth Davies bass Deszon X. Claiborne drums Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn You know him, and you love him, but read up and drive deeper into the charm, beauty and talent that is Dmitri Matheny! Click here! https://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/artist/dmitri-matheny Haven’t heard Dimitri Matheny live yet, but love jazz in all its beauty? You’re in for a wonderful show!
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Veteran drummer Tony Johnson, a master of swing, bebop and straight ahead jazz with 65 years on the San Francisco scene, has a monthly residency at Bird & Beckett. In the odd-numbered months (January, March, May, July, September, November), he brings his quartet with saxophonist Bob Kenmotsu, pianist Keith Saunders and bassist Eric Markowitz — first call, top flight jazz players all. In the even-numbered months, Tony leads the 230 Jones Street band, which of late featured the great Si Perkoff, may he rest in peace. Tony’s band will make a special nod to Si on their April 26th date. But tonight, it’s the quartet! Tony Johnson, a native Australian, slipped down from Canada and hit North Beach in 1959 while still in his early twenties, and immediately found work in the clubs there, recording in 1960 with vocalist Bev Kelly live at the Coffee Gallery in a band that…
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Walker Talks! A monthly exploration on a diversity of topics by Walker Brents III. Tonight, The Grail. (Basically a live stream — at show time, the talk will be live on Bird & Beckett’s Youtube channel and Facebook page, but you can also come in person if you like – call 415-586-3733.) Expressed in material analogy, the Grail is a sword or stone or spear or cup. Each of these has its own poetic history arising differently in culture after culture, in age after age. The unity shared by these analogical forms is one seen not with but through the eye, and has given rise to many forms of poetic speech, residing in one source—the faculty of human poetic vision. This is the vision which has from ancient times transformed the subject matter of the literary epic from heroic exploit to sublime character formation. This is not so remote as…
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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." 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
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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
