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!
Jay Sanders is a fiery and lyrical trumpet player who will play any tune, any time, any tempo, any key…. that’s why they call him Jay Standards!  Get down to Bird & Beckett this Saturday night to hear Jay’s quartet at our cozy little weekly 8-11 pm “jazz club”.  Members get in for $7, everybody else – $10 cover. Jay Sanders, trumpet Grant Levin, piano Charles Thomas, bass Vinnie Rodriguez, drums join jazz club for $75 per year.  you’re investing in live jazz music — just the thing that makes San Francisco the envy of the world.  donate big money to become a jazz philanthropist, to make sure this scene just keeps getting stronger!  Bird & Beckett has a 501(c)3, so you can take a tax deduction for your largesse!  The culture thanks you. You’ll thank the musicians for their incredible talent and dedication to a great American art form.
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San Francisco’s longest running neighborhood jazz party continues to pack the place, and every third Friday our favorite guitarist takes the helm. No cover charge, but your kind donations at the shows help us pay the musicians! Â And your annual tax-deductible contributions to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project 501(c)3 nonprofit organization make it all possible.
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“Generations” – a Bird & Beckett Litquake reading!    Five San Francisco Poets, 27 to 69:                       A gathering of decades, born on the fog banks over Twin Peaks. Seth Amos, Neeli Cherkovski, Patrick James Dunagan, Marina Lazzara and Jessica Loos read their work. Born and raised in South Carolina, Seth Amos now lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the poetry editor of “Rivet: The Journal of Writing That Risks.” Neeli Cherkovski is an internationally recognized poet, memoirist and literary chronicler, recipient of a PEN Josephine Miles Award and an Acker Prize for poetry and biography. His book “Spent Shadow” is due out this fall. Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. A graduate of the now defunct…
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a concert of Hindustani (North Indian) Classical Music. Joanna Mack, sitar. Ferhan Qureshi, tabla. Joanna Mack began her study of Indian Classical sitar in 1997. She spent eight years in Kolkata studying under Pandit Deepak Choudhury, and returned to the U.S. where she has had the honor to study under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Sarodia Bruce Hamm and Sangeet Research Academy Guru Partha Chatterjee. She has been teaching and performing since 2006. Read more at JoannaMack.com Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi is a disciple of the legendary tabla maestro, Ustad Tari Khan.  Prior to the training he continues to receive from Ustad Tari Khan, Ferhan took his initial lessons in Hindustani music theory and practice with Surinder Singh Mann. Ferhan studies the Punjab gharana (musical style) of classical tabla, which both of his teachers represent, and has accompanied numerous classical artists vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers) both in the United States and in Pakistan. which way west? Bird & Beckett’s weekly Sunday concert…
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Pianist Grant Levin has become appreciated as among the very finest young pianists on the local jazz scene, and his collaboration with seasoned tenor sax player Noel Jewkes has paid dividends for both of them, and for audiences all around the Bay Area.  Tonight, they’re joined by veteran bassist Chris Amberger, one of Grant’s very earliest proponents, and drummer Hamir Atwal.  Both of the latter two gentlemen lend tremendous swing and joy to the bandstand every time. “jazz club” is what we call our weekly Saturday night session… each week a different leader brings in some of the best talent the Bay Area has to offer, showcasing the musicians you want to hear– whether you know it or not!  It’s a beautiful scene, and we hope you’ll make it a habit. 8-11 pm every Saturday night!  $10 cover charge; wine and beer available — donate what you can to defray the cost of…
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Drummer Jimmy Ryan leads a stellar rotating crew of musicians on the 2nd Friday of each month — usually two horns on the front line, piano, bass and drums.  This week, he’s got Stu Pilorz on trombone; Stephen Norfleet on tenor sax; Don Alberts on piano; and Bishu Chatterjee on bass.  Each time out, there’s a slight adjustment in the line-up, so the dates are always fresh and energized.  It’s a wonderful Friday-after-work neighborhood crowd with the occasional visitor keen to see what all the fuss is about.  Music ends at 8, so don’t be too late… Jimmy learned his trade as a jazz drummer in L.A. in the ’50s, and hit the San Francisco scene (by way of a short stint in Monterey) in 1960.  He’s 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…
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Duocracy, a project of trumpeter Ian Carey and pianist Ben Stolorow, focuses on classic tunes from the rare to the familiar, ranging from Gershwin and Gordon Jenkins to Thelonious Monk and Henry Mancini, plus occasional original tunes. Within that repertoire, they aim for interplay, unpredictability, and surprise. (You can see them performing one of their favorites, Monk’s “Four in One,” here.)
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Taurean Horn Press 40th Anniversary Reading — Publisher Bill Vartnaw and a roster of fine poets celebrate one of California’s key small presses.  Poets Q. R. Hand, Gail Mitchell, Jeanne Powell, Kim Shuck will be joined by other alumni of the press to be announced.
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Clarinetist Ben Goldberg has been playing at the top echelon of American progressive jazz for a couple of decades and has recorded prolifically, including a recent session with tenor sax player Smith Dobson, the leader of our 1st Saturday “jazz club” sessions.  Drummer Hamir Atwell and bassist Eric Markowitz, two key and wonderfully creative players on the Bay Area jazz scene — both heard many times in the past at Bird & Beckett — will anchor the quartet.
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The first Friday of every month, it’s always Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble — a fixture in San Francisco’s longest running neighborhood jazz party! Don has had a six decade love affair with the string bass and jazz, beginning back in the 1950s. That’s when he first made his mark as a mainstay of the Bud Shank quartet, touring internationally and accompanying the likes of vocalist Peggy Lee. Don’s been indulging in public displays of his affection for the music at Bird & Beckett ever since our weekly jazz series began in October 2002… twelve years ago… In all that time, we’ve never been without live jazz at Bird & Beckett on Fridays — largely because Don has made it happen under the unlikeliest circumstances! Besides Don on bass, Seabop features three top-notch players — Jerry Logas on reeds and flute, Michael Parsons on piano and Vinnie Rodriguez on drums. jazz in the bookshop happens every Friday…
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Cuban son, boleros y guajiras from a three-piece ensemble led by singer and guitarist Johnny Escobedo, with Norman Downing, percussion and vocals; Roberto Razon, tres cubano and vocals! The sounds of Havana and the Cuban countryside! Read more on El Guajiro site: Â click here!
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Walker Brents III weaves a fascinating web of insight, association, speculation and delight the last Sunday of every month, following his muse where it takes him on topics divers — from epic literature to mythological tales to the enigmas of poetry and the profundities of philosophy and religion. Today at 2:30, join his many devotees to explore with him the thought and writing of 9th century Irish philosopher and philosopher Johannes Scottus Eriugena, whose neoplatonic cosmology posits the infinite, transcendent and ‘unknown’ God, beyond being and non-being, who through a process of self-articulation, procession, or ‘self-creation’ proceeds from his divine ‘darkness’ or ‘non-being’ into the light of being, speaking the Word who is understood as Christ, and at the same timeless moment brings forth the Primary Causes of all creation. Walker Talks!  Knock him your lobes!
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Michael is leaving for Paris, drawn by love, and vowing to return, in 2016, married, we sincerely hope, to the lovely Siham! Â He’s unquestionably the best young bebop piano player on the local scene, having climbed quickly to that level over the past decade since arriving here from the Central Valley town of Lodi. Â There, he’d been a prodigy, starting at age seven on the piano and gaining technique — a looseness in the wrists that’s since been key to navigating the bebop tempos and changes and a practice regimen — acquired particularly around age 12 or so under the tutelage of teacher Frank Wiens, particularly focused on the Russian school around Rachmaninoff et al. Michael’s grandfather, Charlie Milosevich, led his own big band in the 1940s, and was gigging as a solo stride player around Central Valley towns when Michael was a youth — though it was almost an…
Read MoreA report on a recent ACCJC/Herrera conference– A friend of Bird & Beckett writes: “​If I had known it would be this interesting, I would have urged more to attend. Traffic was a problem in getting there. But inside the courtroom, the half-hour case management conference was rewarding. It started with the usual, the People making their case that Restoration didn’t really solve their problem, and the ACCJC countering that due to Restoration making a “huge” difference, there was really no need to waste the taxpayers’ money on anything more. The ACCJC lawyer did not see any difference between Restoration and what the People were asking for. The judge said actually he did see some differences. “I thought their lawyer (Sklar) was particularly entertaining in pointing out all the ways he thought money would be wasted if they were to proceed. Except that there were no dollar amounts attached, his…
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan, in California from her home back east for the Petaluma Poetry Walk, recently published a new volume of poems called The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets.  She is a recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions), and is the Founder /Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Jan Beatty’s book, The Switching/Yard, was named by Library Journal as one of …30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry. The Huffington Post called her one of ten “advanced women poets for required reading.†Books include Red Sugar, Boneshaker, and Mad River, published by University of Pittsburgh Press. She directs the creative writing program at…
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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.
TAKE OUR SURVEY
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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
