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!
Sundered Sound is a multi-genre event showcasing SFSU students of the arts, aiming to force music and words into collision to create fresh experiences. It’s a series dedicated to the wide range of emotions that sounds can strike. The evening will include segments by writer August Edwards; a duo comprising poet Elodie Townsend and electronic musician Nathan Ho; a quartet comprising rai, Kara, Leo and Alder Duan Hurley; writer Tadeh Kennedy; and Quinn Rennerfeldt. Evan Burkin, who has organized the event, will host. August Edwards is a nonfiction writer. She is lucky in cards and in love. She listens to desert rock. You can find her work in Albuquerque Green Room, Word West Revue, Mulberry Literary, and Hard Noise. ElodieTownsend (she/her) is a poet from San Francisco. She holds a B.A. in English jiterature from U.C. Berkeley, and is set to receive her M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco…
Read More
Students frame the pros this weekend, with a cavalcade of SFSU creative arts students converging for a poetry and music revue Thursday evening and a gaggle of jazz students from SFCM celebrating the impending end of the semester Sunday evening. In between, on Friday and Saturday, we present three significant jazz concerts and a book launch! Friday at 6pm, the 230 Jones Street band celebrates the memory of veteran pianist Si Perkoff, and at 8pm we present Seattle avant guitarist Mike Gamble’s trio with bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, herself a key figure in the Bay Area avant garde. Saturday evening, two giants of the music, Phillip Greenlief and Scott Amendola, get in a few final duo licks as Phillip prepares to decamp with his wife for Maine this summer! Catch this one, and mark your calendar now for two nights of shows with Phillip’s long running Lost Trio on June 14…
Read More
Ben Stolorow, piano Peter Barshay, bass Vince Lateano, drums $20 suggested; pay what you can. b.y.o.b. Bebop to bossa. A delightful trio with a long-running third-Sunday-of-the-month residency at Bird & Beckett.
Read More
Saturday’s jazz club date, 7:30-9:30 pm, features a superb quartet on the Latin side under the leadership of Marco Diaz, piano, with bassist Steve Senft-Herrera and percussionists Julio Perez and Ahkeel Mestayer. Top players doing what they do so well. Bassist Saúl Sierra was set to lead this group, but air travel delays have him stuck in Dallas, arriving too late to make the date. We’ll get him back on the schedule down the line apiece. BYOB and a twenty for the band.
Read More
In 1994, thirty years ago, The Lost Trio stepped into existence with a steady gig on Thursday nights at the Rose Pistola in San Francisco’s North Beach district. A four-year stint on Sundays at Cato’s Ale House in Oakland followed. The trio has a history of touring that’s focused on the west coast, where they’ve enjoyed festival dates, performance lectures and workshops at colleges and universities, live radio broadcasts, club and in-store performances, and more than a few wonderful engagements at Bird & Beckett. Saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, bassist Dan Seamans and drummer Tom Hassett have developed the trio’s music over a consistent history of private sessions, so that their public performances are deeply rooted in long interplay and friendship. Now, Phillip is moving with his wife to Maine, and though his performing career will undoubtedly bring him west from time to time, the trio is wrapping up this phase of…
Read More
Independent reporter Denise Sullivan brings the SFLives series back to Bird & Beckett for a Sunday morning livestream. You can find it in the video screen at the top of this website, or watch it later on our YouTube channel or Facebook page. In Marxism & Witchcraft (“A Marxist Theory of the Apocalypse & and Ecological Critique of Marxism”), author David Kubrin examines how Marx and Engels’ repudiation of religion blinded them to the critical role played by curanderismo and shamanism in the resistance to colonialism which ultimately led the movement along a trajectory that was racist, Eurocentric, antagonistic to workers and married to programs of industrialism without any regard to environmental consequences and weakened the communist fight against encroaching fascism. By examining the ideological foundations of Nazism, Kubrin brings to light the cultural, strategic and spiritual terrain on which it’s critical to do battle in today’s struggle against neofascism…
Read More
Next weekend kicks off early, with a Thursday 4/18, 7:30pm live stream of Walker Brents III’s monthly excursion into topics in poetry, philosophy, mythology, literature and other areas of interest… this time out considering the poet Jack Spicer and “the Quest for Meaningful Speech,” a personal response to the compelling challenge of a cryptically precise poet. No matter how austere, how stripped and futuristic the language of the poetry, Spicer had an appreciation for the human community that was prescient, astringent, dangerously rich, and generous. The sources of his fascination are hydra-headed. Understanding him is akin to defending ancient springs. Jazz music ensues! Scott Foster invites Darren Johnston and Heshima Mark Williams back to the Bird & Beckett stage for a further musical excursion on Friday, April 19 at 6pm — building on a date a few months back. It’s our Friday-after-work jazz happy hour, the one that started in…
Read More
Kim Shuck’s B&B-sponsored online poetry series has been going strong, on Zoom and Google Meet, for several years now and attracts a broad community of poets. 2nd Mondays, Kim hosts two featured readers and conducts the open mic that follows. 4th Mondays, it’s all open mic. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713?pwd=eE84V3BYdWxiSFBHNHhmdUt1WTUzdz09 Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713 Passcode: 244211 The featured readers this time out are Norma Smith and Ellyseo Metcalf. Read on! Norma Smith has lived in the East Bay for more than half a century. She has worked as a journalist, a translator-interpreter, community scholar-educator, event and conference organizer, and as an editor, writing coach, and workshop facilitator. Norma’s book of poems, HOME REMEDY, is available at https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/home-remedy/ Ellyseo (el-LEE-see-oh) Metcalf is another lost soul that read The Stranger in high school and never recovered. Unable to find meaning within the Marine Corps, religion, or education, he now scribbles pretentious blasphemy…
Read More
The first Sunday of the month is a set aside for a jam session for young jazz musicians hosted by a professional trio, with a student combo from one of the area’s fine jazz programs opening the evening with a 45 minute set. This month, Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland sends us another great band, bursting with young talent. Then, drummer Akira Tana leads a jam session with his trio, open to student musicians from all directions. The art of the session is a key skill that aspiring jazz musicians take to with astonishing results. Always a pleasure to hear! No charge to attend, but audience donations at the show or sent to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, our 501(c)3 nonprofit, help us keep this series going. Use the “Donate” button on this website or bring a check to the store! Be sure to let us know…
Read More
Harvey’s back, and Bird & Beckett’s got him! The Los Angeles Times noted many years ago, that “Harvey Wainapel can be judged by the company he keeps.” He toured the world for a year as a member of Ray Charles’ group. Two of Brazilian jazz’s brightest stars, Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, kept him traveling with their group on and off for six years. And modern sax master Joe Lovano utilized Harvey’s talents for tours in Europe and North America. He’s also performed and/or recorded with pianists Dave Brubeck, Kenny Barron & McCoy Tyner, drummers Mike Clark (Herbie Hancock) & Billy Hart (everyone!), the hr-Bigband (German Radio Big Band in Frankfurt) and Holland’s Metropole Orchestra. Wainapel has also presented his OWN work in clubs, festivals, workshops, and studios in 17 countries. Sax master Joe Lovano states “It’s a pleasure to listen to Harvey’s soulful interpretations.” Japan’s JazzLife calls Wainapel “a musician with his own unique and deep sound.” “The room is warm, the audience…
Read More
Join us for an unforgettable evening of jazz with drummer Sheldon Alexander’s quartet. A sought-after sideman for many, many gigs, he’s also passionately developing his own unique projects. This night at Bird & Beckett will feature an exceptional combo, with the renowned guitarist Ilya Lushtak straight from New York City, alongside two musicians who have been key players in these parts for decades, Adam Shulman on the organ and Erik Jekabson on the trumpet. Prepare to be captivated by this extraordinary ensemble under the leadership of a rising star of the Bay Area music scene.
Read More
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…
Read More
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.
Read More
Sign 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
