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!
Drummer Myron Cohen carries the spirit of the late Billy Higgins into the present day, with joy and a propulsive and irresistible beat.  He has partnered with so many fine players and has taken so many young talents under his wing in his desire to be true to Higgins’ spirit.  Today, saxophonist Steve Heckman, a major talent of international stature, joins Myron, pianist Eddie Mendenhall and bassist Joe MacKinley to play two sets of fantastic bop and straight ahead jazz, with guests including the stunningly talented young vocalist, Aspen Jordan. Cohen has played with major artists including Michael Bloomfield, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Otis Spann, Ron Stallings, Azar Lawrence, Ravi Coltrane, Donald ‘Rafael’ Garrett, Woody Shaw, and Wayne Shorter – to name a few.  But his most significant connection may have been with drummer Higgins, who gave a great deal to Cohen including some fascinating stories of his…
Read More
Bassist Heshima Mark Williams presents The Kenny Hawkins Quartet Kenny Hawkins on sax; Muziki Roberson on keyboards; Heshima on bass; and Michael Spencer on drums. When his busy traveling schedule allows, Heshima books our third Saturday jazz club dates.  This week he’s arranged for Kenny Hawkins to bring in a quartet.  A detailed bio on Kenny can be found at this link:  http://groovindeep.com/band_bio/Â
Read More
Scott Foster, guitar. Lorenzo Farrell, organ. Omar Aran, drums. On the third Friday of each month, Scott Foster puts together an ensemble for our end-of-the-work-week jazz party. Â This month he’s concocted a sweet little organ trio that will put you right back in the late 50s lounge territory of the great Jimmy Smith. Â A guaranteed great time at Bird & Beckett to kick off your weekend!
Read More
Exuberant music by two masters of styles long forgotten by the popular audience. Craig has had a decades-old obsession with investigating the music he’s found in the grooves of dusty stacks of 78s. Â He plays a whole lot of guitar; in fact, is pretty much world famous for his talents and investigations of the music that once dominated the parlors of homes across America. Meredith has immersed herself in the study of the music of those long gone eras and plays a whole lot of guitar herself. Â She also has an amazing way as a singer, uncannily channeling the voices long lost in the grooves of those old 78s. Â She’s headlined shows at Hollywood’s Steve Allen Theatre and has opened for the Cheap Suit Serenaders. It’s fun stuff and these are two amazing talents. Â Hope you’ll join us. Â You won’t regret it!
Read More
The B-Stars are a San Francisco-based Americana combo that stirs up a hearty stew of honky tonk and hillbilly hits for your listening and dancing pleasure. With nods to the country and western stars of the late 1940s and 1950s, these sharp-suited honky tonkers will be singin’ and swingin’ their ever-lovin’ hearts out. The Trio features Greg Yanito on acoustic rhythm guitar, Larry Chung on fiddle plus electric and steel guitars, and Eric Reedy on gut-stringed upright bass fiddle, making for a classic western jazz combo.  Strong songwriting, an entertaining live show, and a few generations’ worth of musical experience give The B-Stars the perfect recipe to keep fans dancing and singing along to a full catalog of fresh original material rooted in the jazz & country western music pioneered by the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Carl Smith, Hank Penny, Bob Wills, and the great Hank Williams Sr. With a debut…
Read More
Pianist and composer Grant Levin assembles an ensemble each week to explore the jazz canon and present his own compositions.  This week, he’s joined by saxophonist Jonathan Bautista, bassist Ollie Dudek and drummer Hamir Atwal — wonderful musicians all, the kind that make us grateful for living in a region with such a rich jazz culture. Don’t miss an opportunity to hear this extraordinary pianist and his exemplary sidemen at Bird & Beckett, the second Sunday of each month, 8-11 pm, when lights are low…
Read More
A reading by contributors to the new anthology, My Very End of the Universe: a celebration and study of an increasingly popular genre: the novella-in-flash, a novella built of standalone flash stories. The novellas in this collection—Betty Superman by Tiff Holland, Here, Where We Live by Meg Pokrass, Shampoo Horns by Aaron Teel, Bell and Bargain by Margaret Patton Chapman, and The Family Dogs by Chris Bower—are comÂpact and specific, yet whole and universal, using the flexibility of the genre to offer a polyphony of setting and emotion. Accompanying each novella-in-flash is a craft essay by the author exploring the form’s power, uses, and unique characteristics. The book opens with a genre-defining introduction to the novella-in-flash by editors Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney, which also offers historical and contemporary context. Although the family struggles presented in these five novellas-in-flash are as old as time, the authors use the form to make them…
Read More
Julie Rogers has several chapbooks in print and her book, House of the Unexpected, was released by Wild Ocean Press in 2012. She’s been writing and reading her work in San Francisco on and off for about thirty-five years, loitering in cafes and roaming streets w/journal and so on, and is most recently a semi-regular in the lower Haight when not at home with hubby, poet David Meltzer. She’ll be reading from her most recent chapbook, Street Warp, published by Omerta Press in 2013, and letting loose some poems taken from a new collection written in SF. An open mic will follow Julie’s reading. Jerry Ferraz, peripatetic bard of Eureka Valley, hosts our twice-monthly series, which takes place on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month.
Read More
Avotcja & Modupue! Francis Wong, sax and flute. Jon Jang, piano. Heshima Mark Williams, bass. Avotcja is a jazz musician with deep roots, a riveting poet, an imaginative and ruminative prose writer, a pioneer, an individualist, a fierce champion of her fellow musicians, poets and artists.  Her band, Modupue, was twice named Jazz Group of the Year, in 2005 and again in 2010, by the Bay Blues Society Hall of Fame. Avotcja with Famoudou Don Moye in the late 1960s With New York, Afro-Puerto Rican roots, Avotcja was performing her poetry and music professionally by age 14. She left for L.A. the next year, and found work in the area’s strawberry fields, and then in the ensuing decade, traveled widely, spending significant time on the fertile L.A. cultural scene of the late sixties, in the company of giants like Black Arthur Blythe, Billy Higgins and Horace Tapscott, before coming up to…
Read More
Smith Dobson was a key jazz pianist in these parts right up to his untimely death in a car accident in 2001 at the age of 54. Â The eminent jazz journalist Philip Elwood wrote, “The importance of Dobson’s more than 20 years on the South Bay jazz scene was indicated by the gathering of an estimated 2,000 people at the Oakwood Memorial Chapel in Santa Cruz. Â Dobson wasn’t only a pianist, singer and arranger. He was also a teacher and an inspiration.” Â For a considerable period, he was the go-to pianist for every major jazz artist passing through the Santa Cruz/San Jose/San Francisco area, and for years booked terrific jazz artists at the crucial Garden City venue in San Jose. And what a pianist he was. Â Alto sax legend Art Pepper used Smith on piano at a memorable concert in 1976, and on the recording of that concert, Art cites…
Read More
Two veterans of the jazz scuffle perform solo and in duo interplay on the last Sunday of December… closing out another year of our Sunday afternoon concert series called “which way west?”  Ray and Duncan have often shared the bandstand (catch them at Club Deluxe on Haight) and have been heard individually at Bird & Beckett many times in the past with one combo or the other. Individually, they gig around town steadily.  A few years back, we invited them into the shop to play off and with each other, and it’s become something an end-of-the-year tradition — when other gigs don’t get in the way.
Read More
Two long-time associates —  both hard driving professionals with 50+ years under their belts — take the bandstand with a young bassist who has become one of the mainstays of the local jazz scene. Pianist Don Alberts was born in the South Bay and made his mark on the San Francisco jazz scene in the early 1960s in venues including Jimbo’s Bop City, where he was house pianist for a stretch.  He’s a prolific composer and has put out several CDs, as well as books of jazz history, fiction and poetry.  Don has also recorded with the renowned bassist David Friesen and has shared the bandstand with the likes of Leroy Vinnegar, Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank. Drummer Art Lewis was born in New Orleans but began his jazz career in San Francisco, and studied under Philly Joe Jones. Like Don, he played in the bustling 1960s jazz scene at…
Read More
jazz club presents The Yancie Taylor Quintet — featuring James Bailey on reeds; Glen Pearson on piano, Ryan Lukas on bass and Bryan Bowman on drums, with Yancie himself on vibes.  Click here to visit Yancie’s site. Yancie has been a force on the Bay Area jazz scene for more than 50 years, and can be heard weekly at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle in downtown Oakland (view their site here)
Read More
Klezmer Music by ~ Chelm Feelharmonik ~ Jeannette Levitsky – accordion Mike Perlmutter – clarinet Rick Elmore – bass trombone One rainy season, the downpours threatened never to end, the roads became impassable, puddles became miniature lakes, and rivers of mud flowed down the mountain. The town council was concerned. The people of Chelm couldn’t shop, children had to be carried from place to place, and even visiting the necessary presented an existential danger. Seven days and seven nights of discussion and debate resulted in the Rain Wall Plan. The elders agreed to empty the town treasury to build a six-foot wall around the entire village of Chelm to keep the rain out. Despite the terrible conditions in which the workmen struggled, the wall was duly erected. Unfortunately, the rain would not cooperate. It continued to fall even inside the Rain Wall! The elders met again. Their plight was dire.…
Read More
Grant Stewart – tenor saxophone Patrick Wolff – tenor and alto saxophone Adam Shulman – piano Eric Markowitz – bass Hamir Atwal – drums “The primary reason that Wolff’s…concept works so well is that he’s found a stellar cast of creative allies. The music feels lived in, like it’s part of an ongoing conversation between widely read raconteurs… each tune is rife with idiosyncratic details that make it a welcome revelation.” – Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News Patrick Wolff’s quartet is joined on this date by New York-based tenor player Grant Stewart, an international favorite of critics and musicians, admired for his powerful tone and deep swing, and respected for his dedication to the art and language of jazz. In a rare series of Bay Area shows, Stewart joins the quartet in presenting the sounds of the classic two-tenor groups through compositions by Charles Mingus, Al Cohn, Freddie…
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.
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.
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
