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!
Free jazz from two musicians who have been exploring new territories for decades.  Check your preconceptions at the door and enjoy a little post-Independence Day freedom — from dogma, convention and whatever expectations you might be inclined to harbor. Ira Kamin got his start in Chicago, making his mark on keyboards with the great blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield. Kamin and Bloomfield came out to California together in the late 1960s, and Ira has been here since.  Early on, he explored blues and country styles on records like as Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line” while “honing his singular avant-garde /aleatoric classical piano style.”  Along the way, his piano and organ work was also featured on albums by Bloomfield, Nick Gravenitis and Otis Rush,  He’s traveled many miles since those storied beginnings. San Francisco-based drummer and producer PC Muñoz recently released a recording of Ira and himself that…
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Special command return engagement!  Todd Novak and the Benny Hillbilleez! Take singer-songwriter-guitarist Todd Novak from the Cowlicks and Cowlicks bassist Johnnie Hamilton, add drummer Martyn Jones from the Mermen, who also drums for the Cowlicks, and Scott Theakston, who’s played with George Clinton — then set them loose for 90 minutes of killer surf green guitar rave-ups, with a rip roaring repertoire of surf n’ turf, ska, rockabilly and movie music, and yeehaw! you’ve got the Benny Hillbilleez playing the latest installment of our Surf-a-billy Swing Time Dance Party…
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Grant Levin will be in the shop with bassist Chris Amberger, playing informally as a duo from 4-6 pm… plan to just browse around, as the chairs won’t be set out ’til 7:00 for “jazz club” — our regular Saturday night date — which will swing into its thing at 7:30 when Grant leads a quartet featuring saxophonist Jonathan Bautista, Chris on bass, and drummer Mark Lee. $10 cover between 7:30 and 9:45. Â After that, sneak in for free for the final couple of tunes, but do tip the band! Â It’s the thing to do!!!
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Jimmy Ryan leads the band on the 2nd Friday of each month… tonight, Dorothy Lefkovits sings, with Joe Cohen on tenor sax, Stu Pilorz on trombone, Don Alberts on piano, Aaron Cohn on bass. Â Ron Marabuto subs for Jimmy Ryan tonight.
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Two widely admired San Francisco poets, followed by an open mic.
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Why are they called “Buena Vista?” Why, it’s just ’cause they look so damned good! And they play good too! Modeled on Eddie Condon’s band that held forth in New York in the 30s and 40s, the Buena Vista Jazz Band plays the original American chamber music, birthed by black musicians in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century– a musical tradition that traveled up the big muddy Mississippi to Chicago and flooded across the continent, sailed the seas, resonates still. Syncopated, intricate, freewheeling and joyful. Every year, we ask the Buena Vista Jazz Band back to Bird & Beckett to help us wish a happy birthday to Louis Armstrong, himself born at the turn of the 20th, whose birthday is traditionally celebrated on Independence Day. The Buena Vista Jazz Band features: Don Neely on clarinet John Hunt on trombone Noel Weidkamp on trumpet Si Perkoff on piano…
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Two of the City’s premiere young saxophonists — Smith Dobson V and Downtown Danny Brown — go head to head at jazz club for the 4th of July — with bassist John Wiitala and drummer Tony Johnson stoking the fire. Scale the heights of San Francisco jazz as it’s played in 2015!
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jazz in the bookshop every Friday, 5:30-8:00 pm Friday, July 3rd: Â SeaBop Trio Don Prell, bass –Â Scott Foster, guitar –Â Eugene Pliner, piano The 1st Friday of every month, Don Prell brings in an aggregation he calls The SeaBop Ensemble, kicking off another round of Fridays. Â The co-founders of Bird & Beckett’s long running jazz series follow suit: Â with Jimmy Ryan fielding a quintet or sextet on the second Fridays, Scott Foster taking the third for a fresh unit of his devising, and Chuck Peterson leading his 230 Jones Street quintet on the fourth. Bird & Beckett’s Friday jazz dates started in late 2002– and somewhere along the way trumpeter Ernie Figueroa, may he rest in peace, gave it its name. And on it goes!
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Drummer Vinnie Rodriguez puts together a combo on the fourth Saturday of every month.  For his June date, he’s got Dan Magay on reeds; Neil Kelly on guitar; and Aaron Germain on bass.  Vinnie reports: “Neil’ s got a few original modern jazz tunes, plus Mingus, Kenny Kirkland, Sonny Rollins’ ‘The Bridge,’  hard stuff.” Born in Los Altos, reed player Dan Magay grew up surrounded by music, starting clarinet studies at 9 and adding saxophone at 10. During his high school years he studied clarinet with Don Carol (San Francisco Symphony), Bill Menkin, and Michael Corner; and saxophone with Mary Fettig, Mel Martin, Burt Corelli and Rory Snyder, moving on to USC as a music major from 1988 to 1990 before transferring to the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1991.  At Berklee, he studied privately with George Garzone, Bill Pierce, Joe Viola, Jerry Bergonzi, Hal Crook and continued studying classical clarinet…
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Every Friday evening at Bird & Beckett, the neighborhood — and folks from foreign climes and Bay Area aeries — assemble “after work” to enjoy each other’s company and the work of some of the fine jazz musicians who call the Bay Area home. The tradition here started in late 2002, when tenor player Chuck Peterson told Bird & Beckett proprietor Eric Whittington that he’d give up jazz and take up golf if he couldn’t find a regular place to play with colleagues who shared his history in the music. Â Whittington took him at his word and offered him a weekly gig, Friday evenings — and Chuck made sure there were musicians who knew their art and called the tunes to keep the music flowing. Â Here we are 13 years on, and on it goes. Chuck’s fourth Fridays quintet features colleagues that started in the music with him back in…
Read MoreTod Thilleman, originally from Wisconsin, has been based in New York since the early 1980s, active in art and poetry there with a long list of associations, readings and exhibitions.  Throughout the 1990s, he was a co-editor of the journal “Poetry New York.”  He also produced a series of what he termed Strophaic transcriptions (strophaic being a term derived by combining the word mosaic with strophe), whose main poetic reality was generated from the “overheard†and the “overseen.†Also based in New York, Lewis Warsh has produced over thirty volumes of poetry, fiction and autobiography, including Alien Abduction (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), One Foot Out the Door: Collected Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014), A Place in the Sun (Spuyten Duyvil, 2010) and Inseparable: Poems 1995-2005 (Granary Books, 2008) and co-founded with Bernadette Mayer United Artists Magazine and Books. Toni Mirosevich lives in the Bay Area, teaching creative writing at San Francisco State…
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Join us Wednesday, June 24th from 7 to 9pm for the opening reception of Holly Coley: Suggested Reading, featuring painting, ceramic sculpture, and a library curated by the artist. See more of her work at hollycoley.com Show runs through the end of July, open daily 11–7. Gallery Ex Libris is located deep in the back of the bookshop. galleryexlibris.com
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Neeli Cherkovski’s newest volume of poetry, The Crow and I (R.L. Crow Publications, 2015) — following two works from the same publisher: Leaning Against Time (2004, PEN Award winner) and From the Canyon Outward (2009) — “again opens the window to the self as (Cherkovski) takes us deeper into his search for time, reason, redemption and love.” Joining Neeli for today’s reading will be honored guest Diane di Prima (San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita) as well as the poets John Landry, Marina Lazzara and Jorge Argueta. Neeli Cherkovski grew up Neeli Cherry — the son of Clare, a social worker, and Sam Cherry, a bookseller and photographer, down in San Bernardino, California. Still in his mid-teens, he was brusquely introduced by his father to the great postman-poet Charles Bukowski and soon gravitated to the Southern California literary scene that centered in the sun-bleached sprawl of Los Angeles. With Bukowski, he co-edited the little literary…
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Reedman Ralph Carney is pret’ near legendary, and plays around here and near and far with a multitude of projects. This one — EaR Candy Quartet — is constituted to test the proposition that “to steal from one artist is plagiarism but to steal from everybody is research.” Ralph goes on to say that EaR Candy digs “a little deeper to uncover hidden gems in the early repertoire of Duke Ellington, Red Allen, Jelly Roll Morton as well as diverse and more recent influences.” He’s joined at Bird & Beckett today by piano player Eric Shifrin, bassist John Clark and drummer Mark Lee to do a little musical spelunking along these lines. We’re ecstatic at the prospect and suspect you ought to be as well! Stir your stumps & come down to the store this Sunday afternoon to find out what Ralph & Co. have in store for you. There may be…
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jazz club! when lights are low… Every Saturday night at Bird & Beckett Aaron Leese, piano & vocals, and Chris Lauf, drums, enlist trumpeter Dave Shaff, guitarist Scott Foster and bassist Kurt Ribak for three rocking sets of funky New Orleans style jazz and blues. If you like your musical gumbo with a kick, you’re going to have a good time with this band. Come early or come late, you’ll like what you hear.
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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.
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
