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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
In the early 1950s, Don Prell was deep in the scene where a whole school & industry of “west coast jazz” was being created. He spent copious amounts of time playing and hanging at venues like Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach and the Haig in downtown L.A., just two of many clubs where the musicians cooked up tunes with intricate harmonies and rhythms in a cool mode that drew eager listeners to the music — though hard bop was equally entrenched in the set lists. At the Lighthouse, twelve-hour Sunday sessions that ran 2 pm to 2 am packed the place and put the club on the map, and the house band went through several iterations, first with major players from LA’s Central Avenue scene including Teddy Edwards, Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss, black jazzmen eventually harassed out of town by the local authorities. White musicians were more easily…
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Desperate and dazed by the agony of sleepless nights and endless days of ill-conceived parenthood,      caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, because I’ve got two children, baby… three gorgeous women with sparkling shades hiding tired eyes      too tired for my life, I’m too tired for my life, life’s going to kill me… sit perched on the wall of a neighborhood sandpit… Floppy bags of toys, diapers and sippy cups spill unnoticed at their feet, the children unseen, unheard, just screaming! screaming! somewhere behind some plastic playstructure… They recognize themselves in each other, trade weary stories, and form, first, a bond… and then…  a band! And miraculously there, in the night, gleams the neon of your favorite dive… El Rio… and Los Train Wreck waiting to TAKE THEM THERE!  To glam… to glory… to their own eponymous cocktail! Where they sing for…
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Two guitarists with a common history, ample musical respect and affection take a turn together on the Bird & Beckett stage.
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A guitarist and tenor sax player explore the music of a great American songwriter. Click on the photo below for their version of “Listen to Your Heart.” From the website www.alecwildermusicandlife.com Jazz musicians fascinated Wilder with their gift for creating extemporaneous compositions. Among those for whom he composed major works were Marian McPartland, piano; Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Gerry Mulligan, saxophone; Doc Severinsen and Clark Terry, trumpet. Entire albums of his songs and shorter pieces were recorded by Bob Brookmeyer, trombone; Roland Hanna and Marian McPartland, piano; Dave Liebman and Bob Rockwell, saxophone; Robert Levy, trumpet and Vic Juris, guitar. Individual Wilder songs have been recorded, notably by such jazz artists as Stan Getz, Chet Baker, George Shearing, Keith Jarrett, Kenny Burrell, Maynard Ferguson, Bill Dobbins, Fred Hersch and Bill Charlap. Wilder’s relationship with popular and jazz singers was especially close. Despite his songs’ sinuous angular melodies and unorthodox forms,…
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Walker Brents III gives a monthly talk at Bird & Beckett, on the last Sunday of each month. Today, his subject is an elusive and curious thing: Surrealism.
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Ben Flood, tenor sax Eugene Pliner, piano Adam Thompson, bass Vinnie Rodriguez, drums Vinnie Rodriguez has done yeoman’s duty every fourth Saturday on our jazz club series since its inception in the summer of 2014. Vinnie was on drums behind leader/pianist Michael Parsons on the very first round of jazz club dates, and when Michael moved away to Paris to marry and become an expat jazz player there, Vinnie supported alto sax player Terrance Tony who took on the fourth Saturday leadership role. Upon Terrance’s untimely demise in April 2015, Vinnie stepped up to lead the charge. This week will only enhance Vinnie’s solid record on the Bird & Beckett bandstand, as he’s recruited tenor play Ben Flood, pianist Eugene Pliner and bassist Adam Thompson to the cause of nonstop swingin’! Back when we started our Saturday night series, two full years ago, we asked several young local players —…
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Pianist Grant Levin and his long-time jazz collaborator, bassist Chris Amberger converse in jazz over two generous sets of music. Arriving in Oakland in his early teens, in the early 1960s, Chris Amberger was schooled in music by some of the great jazz and blues figures of the era, including pianist George Duke, drummer Smiley Winters and guitarist T. Bone Walker. He was a participant in the birth of Oakland’s free jazz movement in the late 1960s, and then headed for Boston’s Berklee School of Music where he studied with vibes player Gary Burton and gigged on the avant garde scene there with Rahsaan Roland Kirk as well as with solid Blue Note era players like Kenny Dorham and Donald Byrd. From there, he went on tour with the latin/funk band Bombolé in North Africa and Europe, with Cal Tjader and Rosemary Clooney in Latin America, with George Shearing in…
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Sinatra was the chairman, sure. But Chuck was the founder of jazz at Bird & Beckett… there’s nothing so sublime! Dorothy Lefkovits sings on each set, sharing the bandstand with Chuck and four wonderful fellow musicians: reed player Howie Dudune, guitarist Glen Deardorff, bassist Dean Reilly and drummer Tony Johnson. Several hundred years of jazz experience aggregated on the Bird & Beckett stage on the fourth Friday of each month!
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Mark Levine, piano; Bob Kenmotsu, sax; John Wiitala, bass; Ron Marabuto, drums. Mark Levine has shared the bandstand and recording studio with Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Wallace Roney, Tito Puente, Milt Jackson, James Moody, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Fortune, Eddie Harris, Stefon Harris, Eddie Henderson, Conrad Herwig, Clark Terry, Ingrid Jensen, Charlie Rouse, Bobby Watson, Chet Baker, Philip Harper, Mark Murphy, Art Pepper, Julian Priester, Bobby Shew, Steve Turre, Madeline Eastman, Enrique Pla and Poncho Sanchez… in particularly fruitful and intense extended stints with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and sax giants Joe Henderson, Harold Land and Dave Liebman… and with latin jazz titans Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Pete Escovido, Cal Tjader and Francisco Aguabella… He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Recording in 2003 for his CD Isla, with his band Mark Levine & The Latin Tinge. He was nominated for a Latin…
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Guitarist Calvin Keys is possessed of a personal style that’s unmistakable, elegant and eloquent. He has been featured on acclaimed recordings since the early 1970s as leader and as a sideman with artists as eminent as Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, and Bobby Hutcherson.  He’s also long been a mainstay of the Oakland jazz scene. We’re pleased to welcome him for his third appearance on the Bird & Beckett stage. Drummer Ajaye Jackson joins Calvin in the Heshima Trio tonight! Bassist Heshima Mark Williams is a world-traveled musician who holds down our third-Saturday-of-the-month date, playing when he’s free and booking the date whenever he can’t be on hand.  For this date, he’ll be here to lead a superlative trio with Calvin Keys at its heart. We’re proud and overjoyed in anticipation of presenting what promises to be an exceptional night of jazz. Heshima dedicates this evening to the wonderful and profoundly influential vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson,…
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Guitarist Scott Foster has assembled a band featuring Danny Bittker on a variety of reeds — clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor sax — and Mike Rinta on trombone! Danny’s a marvelous player with soul and humor to spare. He’s played at Bird & Beckett many times in the past, notably with his gypsy jazz outfit, Eclair de Lune. Tonight, he dons the hat of music director, much to Scott’s pleasure. Trombonist Mike Rinta joins Danny on the front line. Mike has toured widely, and performs and arranges for Pacific Mambo Orchestra. He’s more than game for what Danny has in mind for tonight. Bassist Michael Price worked with Dan Hicks in his late years, and has an affinity for clever country swing as well as trad jazz, evidence his time in the Reprobates and the New Moldy Figs. Drummer Jack Dorsey plays with verve and ease, well attuned to New…
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Jack Riordan is just one of the top jazz guitarists in the region, no question — and he’s playing a three-venue run of shows in the company of ace organist Wil Blades and famed drummer Mike Clark: at Birdland Jazzista Social Club in Oakland on the 17th, Bird & Beckett on the 18th, and the Sutter Creek Theatre in his hometown in the Gold Country on the 21st! All three shows will be recorded for an upcoming cd!
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POETS! a twice-monthly series hosted by troubadour Jerry Ferraz. Every first & third Monday, 7-9 pm Tonight’s featured poets are Eugene Berson and Vince Storti. They’ll be followed by one of the best open mic sessions in San Francisco – a city of poets! Gene Berson says, “I’ve been writing seriously for many years, and live in the northern California foothills. I grew up in the bay area. I’ve published in American Poetry Review, Bastard Angel, Beatitude, Vanishing Cab, the online magazines Abalone Moon and Referential Magazine and the anthology Honeydew. American Academy of Poets prize, SFSU, BA,MA in English Literature. I have two manuscripts of poems I hope to publish this year, one entitled Yuba Grooves — poems written the last ten years and focusing on the Sierra Foothills; the other, Relative Orbits, includes more family-inspired biographical work. I co-ordinated Poetry in the Schools in the early seventies for several…
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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.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above, drop off a check at the bookshop, or drop one in the mail to:
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.
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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
