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!
Guitarist Scott Foster holds down the 3rd Fridays assignment in Bird & Beckett’s “jazz in the bookshop” series. Now well into its 13th year, this is truly a neighborhood jazz party par excellence. Tonight, Scott is bringing in a quartet with Art Khu on piano, Adam Gay on bass and Greg Wyser-Pratte on drums. Songs of summer joy & release! For each of his sessions, Scott can be counted on to assemble a band and a program that will make you smile, deepen your appreciation for the music and stretch your knowledge of its capabilities.
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Here on a brief visit from Paris and Oslo, pianist Michael Parsons and drummer Ulf Bjorkbom, with sax player Danny Brown and bassist Noah Schenker — all familiar faces on the Bird & Beckett bandstand — return to Bird & Beckett! Besides celebrating Paris & Oslo & all that jazz, we’ll be celebrating the proprietor’s 59th birthday and the beginning of the store’s 17th year in Glen Park! And with any luck at all, we’ll also be toasting the success of our application for a “Limited Live Entertainment Permit.” Â (Our hearing before the Entertainment Commission takes place at City Hall on Bloomsday, June 16th.)
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Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed… –Come up, Kinch.  Come up, you fearful Jesuit… And thus is introduced young, intense Stephen Dedalus whose day unfolds in counterpoint to and occasionally overlapping that of ad salesman Leopold Bloom in 1904 Dublin — June 16th, to be precise — at the outset of James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses.  Bloom himself is introduced in the second chapter, making his wife’s breakfast, feeding the cat some milk, stepping out to buy a pork kidney at the butcher’s to cook up back at home. Bloomsday celebrations have taken place all over the globe for decades– we’ve staged a few ourselves in our modest way, and we’re game to do it again. We figured the way we would do it this time would be to read bitsof the book, ten minutes a…
Read MoreRichard Anbian has been described as “a passionate virtuoso steeped in these times and deep with tradition,†according to Richard Hack, “[whose] poetry crackles with currency – hiply linguistic turns of natural originality, rhythmically brimming with a tempestuous taste of ecstasy, reason, and love.†Dusty Dog Reviews declared him “a genius or a Venusian.†Gerald Nicosia is a biographer (“Memory Babe”), cultural historian (“Home to War”) and literary critic as well as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and poet. His new book of poems is “Night Train to Shanghai” (Grizzly Peak Press, 2014).  Click here to read a review of that volume in the Huffington Post.  As a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past three-plus decades, Gerry has contributed to hundreds of publications, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, the American Book Review, the Review of Contemporary Fiction,…
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Note the 3pm to 5pm time for this gig! The Warriors are taking the NBA by storm, and we recognize that many of you want to be glued to this game! Fear not! Â No reason to miss blues saxophone powerhouse Nancy Wright & her trio, with Lorenzo Farrell on organ and Jay Hansen on drums. We’ve shifted the time up a bit for our Sunday “which way west?” session, so that you can indeed have it all! Jazz & basketball: will wonders never cease? With 30 years in the business, Nancy Wright has performed with B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, Elvin Bishop, Lonnie Mack, Commander Cody, Joe Louis Walker and Katie Webster. Â She’s been on innumerable recordings, not the least of which was BB’s Grammy-winning 33rd studio album released in 1993, “Blues Summit.” Â On that lp, BB joined one blues great after another and it was Nancy’s good fortune…
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Pianist Grant Levin enlists master reed player Noel Jewkes, bassist Kash Killion and drummer Mark Lee for three sets of small combo work. Each of these players is a seasoned pro with a stellar reputation in the Bay Area. All welcome!  $10 cover charge; $7 for members of “jazz club!” ($75 annual dues).
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On the second Friday of each month, jazz in the bookshop features The Jimmy Ryan Quintet aka The Bird & Beckett Bebop Band! In June, Jimmy’s band features Stu Pilorz, trombone Joe Cohen, tenor sax Don Alberts, piano Bishu Chatterjee, bass Jimmy Ryan, drums Jimmy learned his trade in L.A. in the ’50s, and hit the San Francisco scene (by way of a short stint in Monterey) in 1960.  Jimmy has played alongside influential musicians Putter Smith, Vince Wallace, Kent Glenn and Bishop Norman Williams, putting in significant time in the early days at legendary San Francisco clubs including Jimbo’s Bop City, Ronnie’s Soulville in the Fillmore and the Jazz Workshop in North Beach, and in a more recent era, the Gathering Caffe on Grant Avenue. Jimmy’s regular band at Bird & Beckett on the 2nd Fridays is typically a quintet and sometimes a sextet, comprising two to three horn players on the front…
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San Francisco Book Launch and Reading! Sons Of Noir: Murder and Mayhem by San Francisco North Bay Writers, edited by Ed Coletti and David Madgalene Contributors: David Beckman, Gary Brandt, Ed Coletti, David Madgalene, Pat Nolan, Jonah Raskin and Waights Taylor, Jr. Publisher: Round Barn Press, Santa Rosa, CA (June 7, 2015)
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This week, Smith shares the front line with fellow tenor player Raffi Garabedian (once a Bay Area player who’s been plying his trade in NYC for a good stretch) with bassist Noah Schenker and drummer Jon Arkin providing the foundation, the pulse and much fine filigree.
Read MoreDan Liberthson crafts poems from his thoughts on family, animals, baseball… all the things that tease his curious mind.  A storyteller as well as a wordsmith, his belief in the power and utility of narrative and language never flags.  He has several collections to his name, the latest being Morning, and Begin Again (self-published, 2012). David Hallstrom, probably the first poet to recite one of his poems to us across the counter at “the old bookstore” — the location down on Diamond Street which we opened up in May of 1999 — wrote of the moon, love, wine, the classic subjects of the poet. We’ve still got Dan in our midst, and he’ll deliver some new poems and perhaps a few old ones.  David, we lost a few years ago, and several of his old friends will read from manuscript pages that his old friend Joe Morosco has held onto. Jerry…
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It may be windy and foggy and cold outside, but the calendar still says May — and that means Spring. For twenty years now, Sherri has curated an intriguing set list of tunes befitting everyone’s favorite season — swinging from the familiar to the obscure, from Clifford Brown and Tad Dameron to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer and Blossom Dearie’s favorite, Bob Haymes. Oh, “They Say It’s Spring” — and with Sherri’s sweet turn of a melody and deft mining of a lyric, by the time you saunter out the door onto blustery Chenery Street, you’ll be singing of robins, daffodils and sunshine — freezing temperatures be damned! The season isn’t over ’til Sherri’s sung.  This will be a date to revel in. David Udolf handles the piano chores, if you can call ’em that… though there’s nothing chorish about ’em, and nothing churlish about David’s playing.  Chris Amberger on…
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Poet Latif Harris examines aging and the tricks memory plays on the instrument of the mind in his new collection of poems, to be presented at Bird & Beckett on May 31st at 2 pm. The book, Barter Within the Bark of Trees, has just been published by Duende Press — which published his first book some 50 years ago! — and comprises a combination of contemplative and meditational work.  The book works also as a study of the historical literary culture of the time, and encompasses his life as a poet beginning with work begun at the age of 33 when he discovered his “poetic voice†after months of automatic writing. Latif’s prior collection, Bodhisattva’s Busted Truth, was published by Browser Books San Francisco in 2006, and was reprinted in 2011. Beat scholar Gerald Nicosia noted for the 2006 edition of that book “…there is an authentic strangeness in the…
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Bassist Kurt Ribak crosses genres between gigs with seemingly no effort, as comfortable in a rockabilly gig as in a gypsy jazz setting or a bebop date.  Here, we can count on Kurt to deliver “music for the jazz impurist.†Writing about Kurt’s recent CD I Got One More!, the long-time Bay Area music critic Lee Hildebrand notes that, “Dance-inspired rhythms anchor the 10 original tunes on I Got One More!, Ribak’s fourth album as a leader. Grooves range from swing, reggae, and bossa nova to bolero, boogaloo, greasy funk, and South African-spiced soca. Ribak’s compositions reflect the influence of Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, and Abdullah Ibrahim. The album represents a triumph of the human spirit. It is the bassist’s first recording since his left arm was mangled in a horrific accident. Ribak confronted the possibility he might never play again, but a year and seven surgeries later, he was back at…
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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
